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>