Baechler, Donald

Celebrated American artist Donald Baechler, born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1956, was increasing recognized as a powerful presence in the contemporary art world. His paintings are rendered with a conscious sense of naiveté which combine a childish innocence with stealth sophistication. His trademark surfaces are thick and intensely worked. Critics have suggested that his work “places him in the painterly tribe of Twombly, Ryman, Rauschenberg and Schwitters.”

Baechler studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Cooper Union in New York, and the Staatliche Hochschule fuer Bildende Kuenste in Frankfurt, Germany.   He works from his great inventory of worldly images which are recorded on slides and collected in the archives of his enormous Lower Manhattan studio.  His cast of characters, which also includes him, come from every source imaginable, and are stamped, silk-screened, projected, drawn, painted, printed or collaged onto surfaces.  In addition to painting, Baechler has also worked extensively and very successfully in the print medium.

With a large international following, Baechler’s work can be seen in museums throughout the world. His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Centre George Pompidou in Paris among many others. Donald Baechler passed away in April of 2022.