28 Facts About Ronald Markman

Ronald Markman was an American artist and educator best known for producing large colorful paintings and sculptures in a style that combined elements of Surrealism and pop art with a deep grounding in color theory.

Ronald Markman integrated classical and popular culture, humor, as well as whimsy and riotous color to deliver social satire and a deeply personal vision of the world.

Ronald Markman aspired to be a professional cartoonist and, as a teenager, sold cartoons to Seventeen and Redbook magazines.

Ronald Markman enrolled in the Art Students League of New York, where he studied with George Grosz, and subsequently at Cooper Union.

In 1952, Ronald Markman was drafted into the army during the Korean War, where his talents were directed toward utilitarian tasks.

At Yale, Ronald Markman studied under the tutelage of Josef Albers, a geometric abstractionist considered the father of color theory and best known for his signature series Homage to the Square.

Ronald Markman earned his BFA in 1957 and his MFA in 1959, studying color, drawing, and painting.

Ronald Markman's aesthetic was rooted firmly in his classical art training and was influenced by both popular culture and primitive artists.

Ronald Markman's first one-man exhibition at the Kanegis Gallery in Boston in 1959 was a critical and commercial success.

Ronald Markman's drawings were included in a group exhibition entitled Drawings of the Twentieth Century at the Arts Club of Chicago in 1962 and in the Chicago Biennial Print and Drawing Show at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1964.

Simultaneously, Ronald Markman laid the foundation for an influential academic career.

Ronald Markman held teaching positions at the University of Florida and at the Kansas City Art Institute.

In 1960, Ronald Markman was offered a position at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he would teach before holding a faculty position at Indiana University for 30 years.

In 1965, Ronald Markman joined the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in New York City.

Ronald Markman creates his own language of art, a newspeak dictionary of words, a new species of people and a completely different environment which makes up his kind of world.

In concert with many of the emerging Pop artists of his era, Ronald Markman was intrigued by the impact of advertising and commercialism on cultural identity and expression.

Ronald Markman borrowed from cartoon constructs and integrated found objects into his art.

Whereas other Pop artists brought a coolness and detachment to their work, Ronald Markman deployed riotous color, humor, and pun-filled word play to engage and invite interaction from the viewer.

Ronald Markman drew from social situations and popular cultural icons to construct his own universe in which viewers saw themselves and society reflected in a truthful but lighthearted way.

Ronald Markman was a highly disciplined and prolific worker, producing a high volume of large and small-scale pieces in addition to the paintings set in his world of Mukfa when he was not teaching.

Ronald Markman worked in multiple media, which included etching, bronze sculpting, and colored pencils.

In typical style, Ronald Markman poked fun at a conventional winter wonderland theme by drawing a camel in a parched desert dreaming of snowmen.

Ronald Markman moved away from the limits imposed by the rectangular dimensions of canvas by painting on small pieces of masonite; these segments were then joined into a sequence that allowed a larger painting to develop into a synthetic whole and to assume unusual and even three-dimensional shapes in its final form.

Shortly after retiring from his position at Indiana University, Ronald Markman moved to Annapolis, Maryland, where he lived and worked until his death.

Ronald Markman had a show at the Maryland Hall for Creative Arts in 2010.

Ronald Markman's work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States.

Ronald Markman's art has been collected by many leading museums, including:.

Several years later, Ronald Markman met Barbara Cabot, who moved with him to Annapolis, where they lived together until his death in 2017.