Philip Taaffe

Philip Taaffe was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1955. He studied at the Cooper Union in New York, gaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1977.

Taaffe lived for several years in Naples and traveled widely in the Middle East, India, South America, and Morocco (where he collaborated with Mohammed Mrabet on the book Chocolate Creams and Dollars). His work is best known for his process-based abstractions, blending iconography, design, and art-historical motifs from multiple cultures to create densely patterned works. An admirer of Matisse’s cut-outs and of Synthetic Cubism, Taaffe borrows works and designs both by well-known artists and anonymous artisans.

The artist’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions worldwide, including the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Taaffe lives and works in New York City.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2018

• Philip Taaffe, Leila Heller Gallery, Dubai

2015

• Casamadre Arte Contemporaneo, Naples, Italy (with Christopher Wool)
• Luhring Augustine Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY
• L'envoi, MARUANI MERCIER, Brussels, Belgium

2014

• Studio d'Arte Raffaelli, Trento

2013

• Luhring Augustine, New York

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

• Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
• The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica
• Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL
• Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine
• Des Moines Art Center
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, New York
• Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Museum der Moderne Salzburg
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna
• Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, MA
• Sammlung Essl, Austria
• Collection Scharpff, Hamburger Kunsthalle
• Reina Sofia, Madrid
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg