Barbara Kasten (b. 1936 in Chicago, Illinois) lives and works in Chicago. She received her BFA from the University of Arizona in 1959 and MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1970. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and Europe. Most recently, Kasten was the subject of a major survey exhibition at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, which traveled to Sammlung Goetz, Germany.

Recent exhibitions include Barbara Kasten: Scenarios, Aspen Art Museum (2020-21); Women in Abstraction, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, and Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (2021); the 2020 Busan Biennale: Words at an Exhibition an exhibition in ten chapters and five poems, South Korea; Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art, Tate Modern, London (2018); Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; and STAGES, a retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia that traveled to the Graham Foundation in Chicago and the MOCA Pacific Design Center (2015-16). Her work is featured in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York; Tate Modern, London; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., among many others.