Karen Laub Novak was an American painter, sculptor, printmaker, illustrator, and writer whose work blended modernist expressionism with deep spiritual and emotional themes. She was active nationally, exhibited widely, and is often remembered both for her artistic legacy and for her marriage to theologian Michael Novak.
Born Karen Ruth Laub in Minneapolis, she grew up in Cresco, Iowa, and received her undergraduate degree in art from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., in 1959 and her master's degree in fine arts from the University of Iowa in 1961. She studied painting with Austrian poet and painter Oskar Kokoschka, printmaking with Argentine artist Mauricio Lasansky and poetry writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop.
Karen is known for a bronze statuette awarded in honor of Dr. Borlaug for scientific achievement in biotechnology, located in Beadle Park along Hwy 9 in Cresco; a bronze liturgical crucifix for a Grand Rapids, Michigan church, also presented to Pope John Paul II; a bronze medallion for the Becket Fund; and glass or bronze awards for other organizations. She has done portraits (drawings and oils) on commission, including an official portrait of the director of OMB for the old Executive Office Building.
Novak described her work as human emotion and interior struggle, hope and despair, love, separation, sexuality, isolation, suffering, and death and tension between intellect and body, silence and communication. These themes appear across her paintings, prints, and sculptures.
Her style is often associated with Catholic expressionism, especially in the context of the cultural and artistic shifts surrounding Vatican II.
Some highlights of Novak's career are she has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, created illustrations for magazines, books, newspapers and filmstrips, taught at several colleges and was a popular lecturer on art and mysticism, and her works are held in numerous private collections.
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