The international auction house for buying and selling of works by Mel Bochner
*  1940 Pittsburgh/Pennsylvania

Would you like to sell a work by Mel Bochner?

Non-binding offer

Register now and receive offers



Ketterer Kunst
Sell successfully
  • Ketterer Kunst is leading in modern and contemporary art and the only auction house in the German speaking world listed among the worldwide 10 (top 7 according to artprice 2022).
  • specializing in internationally sought after artists.
  • Bespoke marketing concepts and targeted customer approach – worldwide.
  • Personalized and individual service.
  • Worldwide visibility for a successful sale of works by Mel Bochner.
  • Printed catalogs : we are the only auction house printing the evening sale catalogs in English and German langiage.

Mel Bochner
Biography
Mel Bochner, one of the most important artists of his generation, in addition active as art theorist, important painter and outstanding graphic artist, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1940. Mel Bochner studied painting at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, but he also fell attracted to the theory of art from an early point on. In order to respond to this preference, he enrolled for philosophy at Northwestern University in Evanston.
Mel Bochner continued his academic career as a teacher: he taught, for example, at the famous Yale University and at the School of Visual Arts in New York, to where Mel Bochner moved in 1964. In 2005 Mel Bochner was promoted to be PhD Doctor of Fine Arts.
In his early work, Mel Bochner tied in with ideas of Minimal Art. In particular works by Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse and Land Art by Robert Smithson proved to be fruitful for his art. A genuine inclination to science confirms Mel Bochner on his way: the objects of his early installations , but also the motifs of his numerous drawings and paintings, show a preference for minimalist geometric, often summed up in serial form. From the late 1960s on, the word increasingly supplemented Mel Bochner's art, not only adding an extra level of creativity, but also an increasingly intellectual basis and a deeper connection with the ideas of conceptual art.
From the 1970s on Mel Bochner freed himself from conceptual ties and focused on abstract and geometric painting in an expressive idiom. The late work focuses on coloring and lettering.
Mel Bochner showed his works in numerous major solo exhibitions at international houses, including a comprehensive exhibition at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich in 1996, 2003, an exhibition at the Geneva Musée d' Art Moderne et Contemporain and in 2006 another great show at the Birmingham Museum of Art. Permanent exhibitions of major museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, London's Tate Gallery and the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge/MA show the work of Mel Bochner.
Mel Bochner lives and works in New York City.