Background
Richard Artschwager was born on December 26, 1923 in Washington, District of Columbia, United States. He was the son of Ernst Artschwager, a Protestant botanist, and Eugenia (Brodsky) Artschwager, an amateur artist and designer.
Richard Artschwager was born on December 26, 1923 in Washington, District of Columbia, United States. He was the son of Ernst Artschwager, a Protestant botanist, and Eugenia (Brodsky) Artschwager, an amateur artist and designer.
In 1941, Artschwager enrolled at Cornell University, where he studied chemistry and mathematics. In the fall of 1944, he interrupted his studies he was sent to England and France to fight in World War II. Some time later, Artschwager returned to the university and, in February 1948, he attained his Bachelor of Arts in physics degree.
During World War II, Richard was appointed administrative duty in Frankfurt, where he moved high-level prisoners across the continent. Some time later, Artschwager was assigned to an intelligence posting in Vienna.
In the early 1950s, Artschwager held different positions, working as a turner and a bank employee. In 1953, Richard began to sell furniture and three years later, in 1956, he designed and manufactured simple and modern furniture.
In 1960, Artschwager received a commission from the Catholic Church to construct portable altars for ships. This led him to consider how to transcend the utilitarianism of tables, chairs and cabinets, and to seek a mode of artistic expression more consistent with his identity as a craftsman. During this period, he built a series of small wall objects in wood and Formica, a decorative staple of American kitchens.
Since 1962, Richard painted grey acrylic monochrome pictures, basing his images on black-and-white photographs, characteristically of modern buildings as shown in property advertisements.
In the 1960s, Artschwager also turned to sculpture, drawing attention to art’s illusionistic properties by painting over found wooden objects with artificial wood grains.
Throughout the 1960s, he produced many figurative paintings from photographs. He integrated time and movement in his paintings and then used perspective as a convention to create the illusion of space.
Richard Artschwager's first solo exhibition was held in 1965 at the age of forty-two at Leo Castelli Gallery. Since then his work has been shown throughout the world, and his enigmatic and diverse oeuvre has been influential, yet not thoroughly understood.
At the end of 1968, he participated in the annual exhibit of sculpture at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In the 1970s, Artschwager began to work on architectural motifs. During the first half of the decade, he employed two processes — fragmentation and expansion. His theme was domestic interiors. He also included associations of various styles of furniture, gradually moving away from the rudimentary nature of them.
In 1974, he developed classic architectural motifs, a compromise between the stillness of the interiors and the ongoing disintegration of destruction. The subject here is light, its ability to guide the eye, the movement's vision and the constant movement and fluid look.
In the 1980s, there was preponderance of the mirror as object-own furniture to accommodate the reflections, possibly combined with other materials like Celotex, painted wood and Formica.
In 1984 and 1985, he used painted wood and remained very active. This design occupies a central place in his creative process.
In the 1990s, Artschwager made a series of sculptures in the form of shipping crates that further blur the distinctions between functional objects and art.
In 2003, Richard took part in the exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in London. His last exhibition took place at Gagosian Gallery in Rome in 2012.
The artist’s late-career work alluded to current political issues through the appropriation or depiction of mass media imagery, such as in his portraits of George W. Bush and Trent Lott.
Artschwager was best known for what he called his "Blps", abstract lozenge forms, shaped like the uprights in an exclamation point and usually black.
One of the most famous Richard's works is "Table and Chair" (1963–1964), a pair of laminate-covered blocks, that serve dually as representations of furniture and functional objects.
His works are kept in different museums all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt and others.
Artschwager’s work has been the subject of numerous important exhibitions, such as at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Quotations: "Sculpture is for the touch, painting is for the eye. I wanted to make a sculpture for the eye and a painting for the touch."
Richard married Elfriede Wejmelka in 1947. The couple had one child. Some time later, in 1971, they divorced. One year after divorce with Elfriede Wejmelka, Artschwager married Catherine Kord. But soon, in 1989, the couple divorced.
Molly O'Gorman was Richard's third wife, with whom he had two children.
In 1995, Artschwager married Ann Sebring.
