Collection: Donald Baechler

(b. 1956)

Donald Baechler has amassed a great inventory of worldly images. Recorded on slides and collected in the archives of his enormous Lower Manhattan studio, they are the sources for many of the compelling images in his paintings and prints. The cast of characters, which also includes himself, come from every source imaginable, and are stamped, silk-screened, projected, drawn, painted, printed or collaged onto surfaces. Then the process begins: underpainting, overpainting, canceling, adding, subtracting, editing until the final work emerges.

Baechler came of age as an artist in the early 1980s when he began exhibiting internationally. Not only is Baechler one of the important artists of his generation, he is also thoughtful and articulate in regard to the contemporary art world. As a second-generation pop artist, Baechler’s paintings and prints are a reflection of a passion for collecting pop images and objects. Combining these images with his own uninhibited style of painting, Baechler creates what he calls an “illusion of history.”

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Museum of Modern Art, New York

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Guggenheim Museum, New York

New York Public Library, New York

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Holland

Centre George Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris

Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland

Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen, Germany

Museum Ludwig, Budapest

National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea

Städtische Galerie Schloss Wolfsburg, Germany

Lehnbachhaus, Munich, Germany

Musée Strassbourg, France

Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janiero, Brazil

Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden

Philadelphia Museum, Philadelphia

Springfield Art Museum, Missouri

St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri

Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California

Orlando Museum of Art, Florida

William Allen Memorial Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio