Beachballs was painted by the American artist Donald Baechler, an important member of the neo-expressionist movement, also acknowledged as a second-generation pop artist. Living and working at the same time as artists like Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf, Baechler, in the same line as those artists, incorporates childlike naive imagery in his paintings. His primary influence comes from artists like Cy Twombly and Jean Dubuffet. Another inspiration comes from the practice of Andy Warhol, who made a famous series of photograph of the young Donald Baechler. Taking everyday objects as his subject such as flowers, houses, globes, and other familiar objects, through their enlargement, they become symbols for universal themes like community, identity, sexuality and mortality. His artistic process combines drawings, paintings, collages, printmaking and graphic art. Through the combination of collected media images and his own drawings and paintings, Baechler expresses his great interest in pop culture and his works give the illusion of being personal and cultural memories, creating an atmosphere of nostalgia among the spectators.

Today, Baechler’s works are included in major collections around the world, such as in the Goetz Collection in Munich, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.