Robert Ryman

Robert Ryman
Nationality	American
Known for	Painting, Conceptual art

Robert Ryman (born May 30, 1930) is an American painter identified with the movements of monochrome painting, minimalism, and conceptual art. The majority of his works feature abstract expressionist-influenced brushwork in white or off-white paint on square canvas or metal surfaces. In 1992, a major touring retrospective of Ryman's paintings was mounted by the Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Gallery. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1994. Hallen für Neue Kunst, a contemporary art museum in Schaffhausen, Switzerland has the largest public collection of Ryman's work, permanently exhibiting 29 pieces created from 1959 to 2007.

One of his paintings done in 1966 is a carefully drawn, all white painting. It was sold at Christie's in London for about 11 million SEK (about 1185660 euros). Twelve years earlier it had been sold for about 24 million SEK (about 2586900 euros).

Ryman is often classified as a minimalist, but he prefers to be known as a "realist" because he is not interested in creating illusions, but only in presenting the materials he has used in compositions at their face value. A lifelong experimenter with media, Ryman has painted and/or drawn on canvas, linen, steel, aluminum, plexiglas, lumasite, vinyl, fiberglass, corrugated paper, burlap, newsprint, wallpaper, jute sacking, fiberplate, gatorboard, feather board, handmade paper, and acrilivin. He has used painted and/or drawn with oil, acrylic, encaustic, Lascaux acrylic, casein, enamel, pastel, oil pastel, graphite, guache, and enamelac. Ryman has also experimented with printmaking, creating etchings, aquatints, lithographs, and silkscreens.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Ryman moved to New York City in 1953, intending to become a professional jazz saxophonist. He soon took a day job at the Museum of Modern Art as a security guard to make ends meet, and met the artists Sol LeWitt and Dan Flavin, who were co-workers with him at MoMA. He also met artist Roy Lichtenstein during this period of the 1950s.

Captivated by the newly acquired abstract expressionist works of Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, Ryman became curious about the act of painting. He purchased some art supplies at local store and began experimenting in his apartment in 1955.

Ryman had his first one man show at Paul Bianchini's gallery in 1967 at the age of 36. His first one man show at a museum was in 1971 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Ryman had a close relationship with the late conservator Orrin Riley, who would frequently give him advice on archival materials, many times testing the acidity of media the artist was interested in using.

He has been interviewed by the television writer and producer Barbaralee Diamonstein twice. Once for the book and video production "Inside New York's Art World" in 1979 and again for "Inside the Art World" in 1993.

From 1975 until the late 1990s, Ryman affixed his paintings to the wall with metal brackets. He would design each set of brackets specifically for each piece and have them constructed by a local metals fabricator.

Ryman's most famous quote is "There is never any question of what to paint only how to paint."

He has stated that his paintings' titles are meaningless, and that they only exist as a form of identification. Ryman actually prefers the term of "name" for a painting instead of a title because he is not creating a picture or making reference to anything except the paint and the materials. The "names" of paintings often come from the names of art supplies, companies, or are just general words that do not carry much connotation.

Robert Ryman's son, Cordy Ryman is also an artist and currently works in New York City.

External links

• Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips from PBS series Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century - Season 4 (2007).
• Robert Ryman - the Guggenheim Museum
• Robert Ryman at Xavier Hufkens