25 Facts About Daniel Buren

Daniel Buren has won numerous awards including the Golden Lion for best pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the International Award for best artist in Stuttgart and the prestigious Premium Imperiale for painting in Tokyo in 2007.

Daniel Buren has created several world-famous installations, including "Les Deux Plateaux" in the Cour d'honneur of the Palais-Royal, and the Observatory of the Light in Fondation Louis Vuitton.

Daniel Buren is one of the most active and recognised artists on the international scene, and his work has been welcomed by the most important institutions and sites around the world.

Sometimes classified as a Minimalist, Buren is known best for using regular, contrasting colored stripes in an effort to integrate visual surface and architectural space, notably on historical, landmark architecture.

Daniel Buren graduated from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Metiers d'Art in Paris, in 1960.

Daniel Buren began producing unsolicited public art works using striped awning canvas common in France: he started by setting up hundreds of striped posters, so-called affichages sauvages, around Paris and later in more than 100 Metro stations, drawing public attention through these unauthorised bandit-style acts.

In 1977 Daniel Buren cut up one of his artworks from 1969 and made a new work, designating that the sections should hang in the corners of a wall, whether that wall was empty, had doors or windows, or even had other artworks already hanging on it.

Daniel Buren's stripes are displayed in private homes, public places, and museums worldwide.

From 1960 on, Daniel Buren designed a number of permanent site-specific installations in the United States, Belgium, France, and Germany.

Daniel Buren creates new spaces within existing environments such as city centers, public parks, entire museums, and even beaches.

For Green and White Fence Daniel Buren installed a functional fence sculpture, consisting of fence posts at four-meter intervals, painted green and white 87-millimeter stripes along a single ridge line: Since the first part's installation, the artist's theme has been extended until, over time, it will become the only form of fence on Gibbs Farm in New Zealand.

In 2004, for the occasion of the opening of the French cultural year in China, Daniel Buren exhibited in his in situ installation De l'azur au Temple du Ciel at Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

In 2009 Daniel Buren collaborated with the collective Ensemble La Ligne created by RCP Design Global agency, with, among others, Louis Dandrel and Roger Tallon to create Curseur.

In 2009, Daniel Buren directed Couleurs superposees at the Opera-Theatre de Metz Metropole on the occasion of the opening of the Centre Pompidou-Metz.

That writing is an important activity for Daniel Buren is made particularly clear in his collected texts Les Ecrits, published in 1991 and then in 2012.

Daniel Buren had his first important solo exhibition at the Galleria Apollinaire in Milan in 1968, where he blocked the only entrance to the gallery, a glass door, with a striped support.

Daniel Buren wished to take part in Harald Szeemann's exhibition "When Attitudes Become Form", in Bern in 1969, without being invited.

In 1971, Daniel Buren devised a banner, 20 by 10 metres, with white and blue stripes on both sides to be hung at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in a big international group show, conceived to encourage artists to exploit the building's space.

Daniel Buren, in turn, said Flavin's fluorescent lights colored his banner.

Daniel Buren was later invited to participate in the Documentas 5 through 7.

In 1986, when Francois Mitterrand was president of France, Daniel Buren attained leading artist status after he created Les Deux Plateaux, a work in situ for the Cour d'honneur at the Palais Royal in Paris.

Daniel Buren had major solo exhibitions at the Touko Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, in 1989, at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2002, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2005, at Modern Art Oxford in 2006, and at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in 2011.

The fifth artist ever to fill the space of the Grand Palais on the occasion of the Monumenta exhibition, Daniel Buren conceived Excentrique in 2012, a giant cluster of colored, transparent plastic discs, which overlap to form a colourful canopy.

Daniel Buren's works are part of several major public collections such as Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp; Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Tate Modern, London; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museo Guggenheim de Arte Moderno y Contemporaneo, Bilbao, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Daniel Buren was one of the five artists shortlisted for the Angel of the South project in January 2008.