Richard Artschwager described curiosity as his most defining personal trait. This helps explain, to some extent, his rather unconventional artistic biography, his entirely independent artistic thinking, and, in particular, the versatility of an oeuvre spanning half a century. Although he showed a keen interest in visual arts from a young age, Artschwager initially studied mathematics and natural sciences. After World War II, he and his brother started a furniture workshop. It wasn’t until the 1960s that he began his artistic journey, building on his craftsmanship and creating a series of his own sculptures. Inspired by a black-and-white photograph, he finally ventured into painting a year later.
Success was not long in coming: he was soon represented by the legendary Leo Castelli Gallery, and his works were exhibited alongside those of Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol, as well as in numerous solo exhibitions from 1965 onward. In the decades that followed, his work consistently captured the spirit of the times: in 1968, 1972, 1982, 1987, and 1992, Artschwager was represented at documenta 4, 5, 7, 8, and IX in Kassel, as well as at the Venice Biennale in 1976 and 1980. In 1988–89, the Whitney Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., presented his first comprehensive retrospective. His fascinating, witty, and contradictory oeuvre encompasses sculptures, installations, paintings, drawings, prints, photography, and furniture design (including for Vitra), through which he challenges viewers’ existing aesthetic and spatial perceptions.

Artschwager also liked to play with unusual materials in his paintings. From the 1960s on, he mostly painted on Celotex, a type of hardboard increasingly used in the construction industry. The rough surface gave his two-dimensional works a relief-like, tactile quality. The artist put his mostly monochromatic paintings in very striking frames made of painted wood or reflective metal: they are part of the artwork and, as is the case with the present work, provide an appealing contrast between the highly polished surface and the coarse texture of the monochromatic painting, emphasizing the three-dimensionality of the artwork as a whole. This was exactly the artist’s goal: the meticulously constructed ambiguity between painting and sculpture. He creates paintings that, in their physical presence, approximate objects and sculptures, thereby creating an ambivalence—a fluid transition between the boundaries of both genres.
Artschwager also likes to play with a certain ambiguity in his choice of subjects. In his “Pastorals” series, the titles alone suggest that we are looking at a landscape. However, these purported landscapes are devoid of color, and it seems as though Artschwager draped a white cloth over objects that can only be sensed through touch.
“Nothing is ever just one thing with Artschwager,” remarks David Frankel, former senior editor at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (quoted in: Curtain Call. The Art of Richard Artschwager, in: Artforum, November 2000, vol. 39, no. 3). This is why Artschwager’s work is sometimes classified as Pop Art, sometimes as Minimal Art, and at other times as Conceptual Art, even though the artist’s primary aim was to blur the boundaries of art and its categories. [CH]