34 Facts About Richard Artschwager

Richard Ernst Artschwager was an American painter, illustrator and sculptor.

Richard Artschwager's work has associations with Pop Art, Conceptual art and Minimalism.

Richard Artschwager's father, Ernst Artschwager, was a Protestant botanist born in Prussia, who suffered greatly from tuberculosis.

Richard Artschwager's mother, Eugenia, an amateur artist and designer who studied at the Corcoran School of Art, was a Jewish Ukrainian.

At that time, Richard Artschwager was already showing a talent for drawing.

In 1941, Richard Artschwager entered Cornell University, where he studied chemistry and mathematics.

Richard Artschwager was later assigned to an intelligence posting in Vienna.

Richard Artschwager then returned to college and, in February 1948, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in physics.

In 1949, taking advantage of the GI Bill, Richard Artschwager began to study with Amedee Ozenfant in Paris for a year.

Richard Artschwager was quite successful until 1958, when a fire destroyed his entire studio and all its contents.

Richard Artschwager then took out a large loan to restore his business.

Richard Artschwager enrolled in a workshop concentrating upon the nude and painted in the abstract easel format, derived from landscape painting.

In 1960, Richard Artschwager received a commission from the Catholic Church to construct portable altars for ships.

Shortly after seeing a painting by Franz Kline, Richard Artschwager discovered Celotex, a rough-textured fiberboard used on ceilings as acoustic paneling, as a medium to enhance the load gesture.

Also from 1962 Richard Artschwager painted grey acrylic monochrome pictures, basing his images on black-and-white photographs, characteristically of modern buildings as shown in property advertisements, as in Apartment House.

Richard Artschwager sought to incorporate, for the first time, human presence into his sculptures.

Richard Artschwager's diptychs show his first attempt to incorporate space in the table.

Richard Artschwager met gallerist Leo Castelli and his gallery director Ivan Karp and, who appreciated his work and exhibited it in group exhibitions during the spring and autumn of 1964.

Richard Artschwager exploited the traditional functions and duties of furniture in space.

Richard Artschwager integrated time and movement in his paintings and then used perspective as a convention to create the illusion of space.

Richard Artschwager drew a series of landscapes, which he used to prepare an exhibit commissioned by the University of California, Davis in the spring of 1968.

Richard Artschwager used them in four basic forms of wood painted nois, as space punctuation: the birth of what the artist called "blps", which were enlargements of punctuation marks produced in such media as wood, horsehair, and paint that embody the artist's growing taste for linguistic references.

In 1969, Richard Artschwager self-published an edition of blown glass sculptures, each unique, that he called Glass Drops.

Richard Artschwager included associations of various styles of furniture, gradually moving away from the rudimentary nature of them.

Richard Artschwager included the dissolution of any visual design on six Celotex paintings in 1972, which depicted the explosive demolition of Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City using photographic reporting.

Richard Artschwager began to be included in group exhibitions and had his first solo exhibition as a mature artist at Leo Castelli Gallery in January 1965.

Richard Artschwager was later represented by Xavier Hufkens and Gagosian Gallery.

Richard Artschwager's work has since been the subject of many important surveys, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris ; Neues Museum, Nuremberg, Germany ; Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna ; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami ; Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin ; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, and Kent Fine Art.

Richard Artschwager's work is included in many museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg; Kunstmuseum Basel; and Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris.

Richard Artschwager has been credited with influencing 1980s artists like Haim Steinbach, Meyer Vaisman, Ashley Bickerton, and John Armleder.

Richard Artschwager estate is represented by Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Spruth Magers, Berlin, and Gagosian Gallery, New York.

Richard Artschwager lived and worked in New York City with his wife, Ann.

Richard Artschwager was previously married to Elfriede Wejmelka, Catherine Kord, and Molly O'Gorman.

Richard Artschwager died February 9,2013, in Albany, New York after a stroke he had weeks earlier.