Raymond Saunders, who created mysterious paintings that often injected with socio-political undertones, died at the age of 90. Casemore, Andrew Kreps and David Zwirner Galleries jointly represent the artist, who announced his death in a joint Instagram statement on Monday.
Saunders’ work features a rally style and extensive use of black paint, both coatings that tie together his common life experiences with formal art training. Saunders weaves complex narratives through elusive means, and doing so often produces structures of meaning to be an educated black American.
“I’m not playing gallery here,” Sanders wrote in a 1967 article.,,,,,“He outlined his thoughts on the artist’s role. “I’m not responsible for anyone’s entertainment.” I am responsible for being as fully as a human and an artist as I am, and at the same time I hope that I hope that in my efforts, some love, some beauty may be deprived of the world, and maybe some inequality is correct. ”
Thirty-five of his massive work are the latest theme of his first career retrospective “Flowers from Black Gardens” at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, a suitable destination for the artist who grew up in Iron City. In the comments on the performance, ArtnewsAlex Greenberger wrote: “Saunders” shows that good painting should not be so easy to radiate their meaning, because art is a novel that can only bring us so close to the truth. He makes the misguided people feel good. ”
Born in 1934, Saunders attended classes in the museum and was at Joseph Fitzpatrick, artistic director of Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Saunders received a scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and then received an advanced bachelor of art from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1960. He then moved to Oakland, California, where he spent most of his life there. In 1961, he received his master’s degree from the California School of Arts, where he later taught (eventually became an honorary professor) and began working as a faculty member at California State University East Bay in Hayward in 1968.
He received the Roman Award Scholarship in 1964, the Guggenheim Scholarship in 1976, and twice won the National Art Awards in 1977 and 1984.
His work features in many groundbreaking exhibitions, including “The Soul of the Nation: The Art of the Age of Black Powers” from 1963-1983, Tate Modern held in London in 2017, and “Digging Such Arts and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980”, organized by Hammer Museum in 2011 in Hammer Museum.
Sanders’ works are a permanent collection of some of the world’s most famous institutions, including the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New York Museum of Art in New York, the Walker Center for Art in New York, the Minneapolis, Minneapolis, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art. Art and the Berkeley Museum of Art in California.
“When I first met Raymond Saunders’ work (spanning 70 years), I was shocked by its depth, complexity and innovation, and his intellectual contribution to critical discourse through his paper “Black is a Color”. We are honored to introduce his work in New York and Paris, and collaborate in his hometown of Pittsburgh at the Carnegie Museum of Art for the first time and in the long and long museums of the Carnegie Museum of Art, and closed his museum a few weeks ago.”
Zwirner added: “Raymond will be deeply missed by his family, friends and the Bay Area community, who has lived since the early 1960s. However, his work will continue to be seen and discovered by new audiences for decades as he holds a legal position in art history,” Zwirner added.
