13 Facts About Mark Grotjahn

Mark Grotjahn was born on 1968 and is an American painter best known for abstract work and bold geometric paintings.

Mark Grotjahn received his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The way Mark Grotjahn paints grew out of conceptual sign making; he would faithfully reproduce peculiar graphics and phrases from local storefronts in his native Los Angeles.

Later Mark Grotjahn began working with colored pencils to develop "perspective drawings" and then perspectival paintings.

Mark Grotjahn first begins by mapping out the triangular radii in black pencil.

Since 1997, Mark Grotjahn has been exploring the radiant motif in his paintings and drawings.

Mark Grotjahn stopped painting the Butterfly works in 2008, after tearing his rotator cuff and breaking a shoulder bone after hitting an ice patch in a ski accident.

Mark Grotjahn was included in the 54th Carnegie International in 2004 and the Whitney Biennial in 2006.

Mark Grotjahn is the recipient of the 2003 Penny McCall Foundation Award.

Mark Grotjahn is often regarded as one of many contemporary painters revisiting late Modernism, alongside fellow painters Tomma Abts, Wade Guyton, Eileen Quinlan, Sergei Jensen, and Cheyney Thompson.

Demand for Mark Grotjahn's works has climbed steadily in recent years, with prices now typically reaching $500,000 to $800,000.

At Sotheby's New York in May 2015, one bidder paid $6.5 million for Mark Grotjahn's abstracted face painting, Untitled, against a high estimate of $3 million.

Mark Grotjahn is represented by Anton Kern Gallery in New York, Gagosian Gallery in London, Blum and Poe Gallery in Los Angeles, Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago and Kaikai Kiki Gallery in Tokyo.