Richard Artschwager

New Paintings

October 29 - December 18, 1999
540 West 26th Street

Press Release

Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition of new paintings by Richard Artschwager.

Richard Artschwager was born in Washington D.C. in 1923 but spent most of his childhood in New Mexico. He entered Cornell University in 1941, and, after serving three years in the Army in Europe, he completed his B.A. in physical science in 1948. Shortly thereafter, he moved to New York City. He then began to study art in the studio school of Amédée Ozenfant and also worked designing and building furniture. After a disastrous fire in his workshop, he began to make the paintings and sculptures for which he is best known using pre-fab materials such as formica and celotex. Artschwager began to show with Leo Castelli in 1963 and he has continued to exhibit internationally since then. His work was the subject of a large retrospective in 1988 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His art is represented in private and public collections around the world including the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Fondation Cartier in Paris and the Kunsthalle in Basel, Switzerland. Richard Artschwager lives and works near Hudson, New York.

The exhibition will consist of five new paintings. Four paintings could be loosely categorized as landscapes drawn from the artist's imagination. The fifth painting is a group portrait of an anonymous crowd of adults and children. The images are mostly black, white and gray with an occasional disruptive use of pattern and color using either paint or formica. The scenes rendered shift from sharp focus to a soft blur and show a wide range of surface textures and degrees of flatness. Through this attention to both the optical and the tactile, Artschwager engages the space inside and outside of the painting exploring the relationship between the viewer, the wall and the work.

Exhibition Works

Chair/Chair, 1987-90 red oak, formica, cowhide and painted steel 39 x 40 x 52 inches 99.1 x 101.6 x 132.1 cm Edition of 100 LM1772


Night Watch, 1999 charcoal, acrylic on fiber panel, wood 49 x 74 3/4 inches 124.5 x 189.9 cm LM1695


White Cherokee (Pastoral I), 1991-98 acrylic and formica on fiber panel 59.25 x 79.75 x 2.25 inches 150.5 x 202.5 x 5.7 cm LM1428


Pastoral II, 1999 charcoal, acrylic on resin panel, wood 59 x 77 inches 149.9 x 195.6 cm LM1572


Pastoral III, 1999 charcoal, acrylic on resin panel, wood 59 x 68 1/2 inches 149.9 x 174 cm LM1693


Pastoral IV, 1999 charcoal, acrylic on fiber panel, wood 58 1/2 x 82 inches 148.6 x 208.3 cm LM1694


Running Man, 1998 animal hair and pigment on masonite 66 x 48 inches 167.6 x 121.9 cm (variable) LM1712