Robert Ryman, the white perspective

  Robert Ryman (b.1930) an American painter, a conceptual artist, and an explorer of a minimalistic palette. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, studied saxophone at the Tennessee Polytechnic Institute in Cookeville and at the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, part of Vanderbilt University. After his service in the reserve corps during the Korean War, stationing [...]

 

Robert Ryman (b.1930) an American painter, a conceptual artist, and an explorer of a minimalistic palette. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, studied saxophone at the Tennessee Polytechnic Institute in Cookeville and at the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, part of Vanderbilt University. After his service in the reserve corps during the Korean War, stationing in Alabama, Ryman moved to New York where he decided to fully immerse in the profession of a jazz saxophonist. During his searches for a flexible work arrangement that would allow him practise music and pay rent, Ryman started working at the Museum of Modern Art… and the journey with art started right there…

 

‘It’s not a blank canvas. It’s got a lot in it. This has to do with the light. It looks very different in different light’ says Ryman

 

Ledger 1982

Untitled, 1961

 

‘Monet did a lot of waterlilies and also some haystacks, a number of haystacks, that were very similar, but very unique, and I think it’s the same with me’, says Ryman

 

 

Robert Ryman, 1977 | Photograph by Hans Namuth
Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
© 1991 Hans Namuth Estate
Art © 2017 Robert Ryman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY

Images Courtesy of ArtsnewsSothebys, Tate