Highlights in Line, Form & Balance: Works from Collection of Donald Baechler, Part I on Thursday, October 19 at 10am
No history of the downtown New York cultural scene in the last quarter of the 20th century would be complete without an acknowledgement of the art of Donald Baechler. In conjunction (and competition) with peers like George Condo, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kenny Scharf, he developed a visual language that was a synthesis of Art Brut, Conceptualism, and Pop Art. Simultaneously childlike, warm, dark and mysterious, Baechler’s painting, sculpture and drawings possess the intellectual rigor that always animates arresting visual art. Born in Hartford Connecticut in the mid 50s, he was educated at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Cooper Union, and the Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Frankfurt. Over the course of more than 40 years Baechler compiled a lengthy exhibition history and is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Centre George Pompidou, Paris and many others. Summing up his own work, Donald himself once said “I am an abstract artist before anything else; for me it’s always been more about line, form, balance, and the edge of the canvas.” And about hard work and a love of painting.