Donald Baechler American, 1956-2022
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Photo Credit: Jason Schmidt
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Donald Baechler’s (1956–2022) artistic practice is characterized by a sustained engagement with contrast and contradiction. His works convey an apparent directness and a distinct naïveté, while their carefully constructed backgrounds, composed of collaged elements and layered surfaces, reveal a deliberate and methodical process. Baechler’s creative approach originated in an extensive archive of popular imagery and found objects, accumulated over years of photographing, observing, and collecting. His paintings may be understood as distilled outcomes of this cumulative practice, in which disparate fragments and stratified layers are synthesized into what the artist described as an “illusion of history.” Among his principal influences, Baechler identified Cy Twombly and Giotto. Baechler first exhibited his work in 1981 at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York, where his pieces were presented alongside those of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His oeuvre encompasses painting, collage, printmaking, and sculpture.
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Born in 1956 in Hartford, Connecticut, Baechler lived and worked in New York. He studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore from 1974 to 1977 and subsequently attended Cooper Union in New York from 1977 to 1978. Baechler’s work is represented in numerous major institutional collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, among others.
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Works
Donald Baechler American, 1956-2022
Untitled (Skull), 2010Handmade cast paper33 x 25 in. (dimensions vary)
83.8 x 63.5 cm.Edition of 9Further images
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In his skull works, Baechler takes a familiar symbol and pares it down to something direct and oddly disarming. By hand applying pulp paint (a mixture of pigment and diluted...In his skull works, Baechler takes a familiar symbol and pares it down to something direct and oddly disarming. By hand applying pulp paint (a mixture of pigment and diluted paper pulp) the surface it built up, lifting from the surface of the picture plane towards the viewer. Suggesting a middle ground between objecthood and painting. Baechler's oeuvre is full of contrasts and contradictions. His works excude a directness and naïvety, at the same time as the well built-up backgrounds of collages and multiple layers speak of a conscious and methodical process of working. His creative process began amidst a vast collection of popular images and objects, archives of years of photographing, looking and gathering. His paintings are condensed versions of a cumulative process that combined fragments and layers into what he called an "illusion of history." The artist cited Cy Twombly and Giotto as his primary influences. Donald Baechler was exhibited for the first time in 1981 when Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York showed his works together with those of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His oeuvre spanned over paintings, collages, prints and sculptures. Baechler, born 1956 in Hartford, CT, lived and worked in New York. Donald Baechler attended the Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore (1974–77); and Cooper Union, New York (1977–78) . Donald Baechler’s work is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Philadelphia Museum; Centre George Pompidou and Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, among other institutions worldwide.
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