Robert Ryman
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Publish Date: 2024
Texts by Jeffrey Kastner, Lucy Lippard, and Dieter Schwarz
Forthcoming November 2024
An extensive look at Robert Ryman’s formative work from the early 1960s, as well as his last series of paintings
In the 1960s, Robert Ryman began to firmly establish the broad parameters of his radical and inventive practice. While he initially gained recognition for work he made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his earlier paintings have remained less widely seen.
This publication includes representative works of all facets of Ryman’s painterly practice during this time—influenced by his career as a jazz musician—including his use of thick impasto brushstrokes on both stretched and unstretched canvas; heavily or sparsely worked paintings in both small and large formats; and a group of rarely seen works on raw linen, each featuring one or several seemingly complete, independent compositions. Many of these works feature subtle suggestions of colorful underpainting that leave an outsized effect on the viewing experience, while in other works Ryman’s assertive use of green, red, and blue intensifies the visual presence of the various white tones.
Revealing the breadth of Ryman’s work, this catalogue also includes a selection of drawings, many of which were made concurrently with the early works, as well as his last paintings. The final canvases demonstrate the inexhaustible and probing nature of Ryman’s singular approach to painting over his five-decade career. The details reveal the visual presence of various white tones, creating an interplay between color and absence and dimensionality that characterizes much of Ryman’s oeuvre.
Details
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Artist: Robert Ryman
Contributors: Dieter Schwarz, Jeffrey Kastner
Publication Date: 2024
ISBN: 9781644231456
Retail: $75 | $100 CAN | £60
Designer: Michael Dyer / Remake
Printer: Verona Libri, Verona
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 8.75 × 11.75 in | 22.5 × 30 cm
Pages: 184
Reproductions: 80 illustrations
Artist and Contributors
Robert Ryman
Robert Ryman (1930–2019) is widely celebrated for his tactile works using white paint, in all its many permutations, which he executed using a range of painterly media on various supports, including paper, canvas, linen, aluminum, vinyl, and newsprint. His works are novel and sensitive explorations of the visual, material, and experiential qualities of his media that exist in a dialogue with their surroundings.
Dieter Schwarz
Dieter Schwarz was born in 1953 in Zurich, where he studied German and French literature, linguistics, and comparative literature. From 1985 to 1990, he was a curator at Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and from 1990 to 2017, he served as the director of Kunstmuseum Winterthur. Schwarz has curated numerous exhibitions and authored many publications on artists from early modernity to the present, including Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Jean Fautrier, Henri Michaux; the Italian Arte Povera artists Giovanni Anselmo, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, and Marisa Merz; and Richard Artschwager, James Bishop, John Chamberlain, Alfred Jensen, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, Richard Tuttle, Lawrence Weiner, and, in particular, Gerhard Richter and Thomas Schütte. Schwarz is the author of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Richter’s drawings. He is member of the Menil Drawing Institute Advisory Committee and serves on the board of Thomas Schütte Foundation.
Jeffrey Kastner
Jeffrey Kastner is a New York–based writer and critic, the senior editor of Cabinet magazine, and a contributing editor at Places. His books include the edited volumes Land and Environmental Art and Nature , and he is coauthor of Artists Who Make Books. His writing on contemporary art and cultural issues has appeared in publications such as Artforum, The Economist, Frieze, The New Republic, and The New York Times, and his monographic essays have been published in books and exhibition catalogues on artists including Doug Aitken, David Altmejd, Michaël Borremans, Nina Katchadourian, Ragnar Kjartansson, Tomas Saraceno, and Sarah Sze.
$75