Brice Marden

BRICE MARDEN <P> The American artist Brice Marden (b. 1938) is one of the great contemporary painters. </P> <P> Brice Marden's first works were the Minimalist monochrome panels of the 1960s large austere 'implacable' oil and wax paintings characterized by a precise coolness. In 1975 Marden had a one-man show at the Guggenheim Museum. </P> <P> Laura Garrard looks at Marden's artistic career from the early works the multi-panel works of the 1970s the Sea Paintings Grove Group Greek and landscape works and the 'Annunciation Series' and Thira. </P> <P> In the 1980s Brice Marden developed a 'calligraphic' or 'Oriental' art which appeared in many prints as well as large canvases. </P> <P> Brice Marden studied at Florida Southern College Lakeland and Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1961. That year he worked at Yale Norfolk Summer School in Connecticut. In 1963 he was awarded a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Yale University at New Haven. He moved to New York City and worked as a guard in the Jewish Museum. At this time he was married to Pauline Baez the sister of Joan Baez the singer and had a son Nicholas. </P> <P> In the mid-1960s Marden began to have one-man exhibitions (typically at Bykert Gallery where he had many shows). In 1966 he became an assistant to Robert Rauschenberg. In the late 1960s Marden began making multi-panel paintings. He worked as a painting instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1969-74. He had solo shows and group shows in Europe (Milan Turin Paris Dusseldorf). In 1975 there was the ten-year retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York unusual for so young an artist. From 1973 Marden visited Greece every year. </P> <P> Other major shows included a one-man exhibition of drawings (1964-74) at Contemporary Arts Museum a drawing retrospective at Kunstraum Munich and the Whitechapel and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam one-man shows of 1981. An exhibition of prints 1961-91 travelled to the Tate Gallery London Baltimore Museum of Art and the Musee d'art moderne de la ville de Paris. </P> <P> This is the only full-length appraisal available. Fully illustrated with new illustrations. </P>