ROBERT RYMAN

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.

Robert Ryman (1930–2019) was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Ryman moved to New York in 1953 to pursue a career as a professional jazz musician. That same year, he took a job as a security guard at The Museum of Modern Art, where he would work for seven years. His time working at the museum in part inspired Ryman to devote his life toward painting. His first institutional solo exhibition was at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1972. 

Dieter Schwarz is a curator and writer. He has organized numerous exhibitions and contributed to publications on artists from early modernity to the present, including Pierre Bonnard, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman.

Jeffrey Kastner is a New York–based writer and critic, the senior editor of Cabinet magazine, and a contributing editor at Places. 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. 

Lucy R. Lippard is a contemporary writer, activist, and sometime curator best known for her study of conceptual art in Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 and for her writing on feminist art and politically engaged art. She has published twenty-eight books, with two forthcoming, and has organized some fifty exhibitions and cofounded Ad Hoc Women Artists, Heresies: A Journal of Art and Politics, the artists’ book center Printed Matter, and the activist group PAD/D (Political Art Documentation/Distribution). Her many honors include the Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award and nine honorary degrees.