Donald Baechler

Biography

Donald Baechler Hours and Jewels, 1986

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"I am drawn to silhouettes because of their emblematic rather than their illustrational quality. I see them as shapes, allowing an image to become an abstraction and for pure painting to take place."

Acknowledged as a second-generation pop artist, Donald Baechler was a key figure of the neo-expressionist movement. His canvases often operate like memory boards, implementing materials and fabrics collected during his travels. Donald Baechler was born in Connecticut in 1956. He attended the Maryland Institute College of Art from 1974 to 1977, followed by a year at New York's Cooper Union. Baechler then studied abroad in Frankfurt am Main at the Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule fuer Bildende Künste. An important member of the neo-expressionist movement, Baechler is also acknowledged as a second-generation pop artist. In the vein of contemporaries such as Keith...

Acknowledged as a second-generation pop artist, Donald Baechler was a key figure of the neo-expressionist movement. His canvases often operate like memory boards, implementing materials and fabrics collected during his travels.

Donald Baechler was born in Connecticut in 1956. He attended the Maryland Institute College of Art from 1974 to 1977, followed by a year at New York's Cooper Union. Baechler then studied abroad in Frankfurt am Main at the Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule fuer Bildende Künste.

An important member of the neo-expressionist movement, Baechler is also acknowledged as a second-generation pop artist. In the vein of contemporaries such as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kenny Scharf, Baechler incorporated childlike imagery in his paintings, also taking note of styles established by Cy Twombly and Jean Dubuffet. His seemingly ordinary subjects–such as flowers, houses, and household items–are transformed to symbolize universal themes like community, identity, sexuality, and mortality. Through the combination of collected media images and his own drawings and paintings, Baechler expressed an interest in pop culture, giving the illusion of nostalgia among viewers.

His artistic process combined drawings, paintings, collage, printmakin,g and graphic art. His creative process began amidst a vast collection of popular images and objects, and inspired by classical art history, the New York School, contemporary art, folk art, outsider art, pop culture, and childhood memories. As a result, his paintings are condensed versions of a cumulative process, built in fragments and layers to create what he calls an "illusion of history."

Baechler’s work can be seen in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Centre George Pompidou, Paris, and Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, among other notable institutions worldwide.

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Works

Donald Baechler
Abstract Painting with Spaceship, 1986
acrylic and fabric collage on canvas
190.5 x 190.5 cm
75 x 75 in
Donald Baechler
Beachballs, 1989
acrylic and fabric collage on canvas
282 x 282 cm
111 1/16 x 111 1/16 in
Donald Baechler
Hours and Jewels, 1986
acrylic & fabric collage on canvas
200 x 200 cm
78 37/50 x 78 37/50 inches
Donald Baechler
Red Tulip, 2015
acrylic and fabric collage on jute
91 x 91 x 3 cm
35 13/16 x 35 13/16 x 1 2/16 in
Donald Baechler
Foot, 2007
bronze dark patina
67 x 26 x 19 cm
26 6/16 x 10 3/16 x 7 7/16 in