Richard Artschwager
"Study for City Man (Vellum)", 1982
Charcoal on vellum
25 ½ x 20 inches (64.8 x 50.8 cm)
Courtesy: Ann Artschwager

Selected by Rebecca Brickman and Linda Norden

Richard Artschwager (b. 1923, Washington DC; d. 2013, Albany, NY) was an American painter, illustrator and sculptor. He earned a BA from Cornell University, New York in 1948 and later studied under Amédée Ozenfant, a pioneer of abstraction. He forged a unique path in art from the early 1950s through the early twenty-first century, making the visual comprehension of space and the everyday objects that occupy it strangely unfamiliar. He was dubbed a pop artist, a conceptual artist and minimalist but he was never to be pinned down with any label. 

Artschwager has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, first at the Art Directions Gallery, New York, NY, and then represented by Leo Castelli from 1965 through the 80’s. Other solo exhibitions include Neues Museum, Nuremberg, Germany; Museum für angewandte Kunst (MAK), Vienna, Austria; Kunsmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, Germany; Contemporary Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York; among others. In December 2023, David Nolan Gallery hosted a major centenary exhibition commemorating the artist’s birth on December 26, 1923.