Donald Baechler, Self-portrait, 1986, acrylic on canvas
Donald Edward Baechler
1956 - 2022
Donald Baechler's creative process began amidst a vast collection of popular images and objects, archives of years of photographing, looking and gathering. His paintings are condensed versions of a cumulative process that combined fragments and layers into what he called an "illusion of history." The artist (born 1956) cited Cy Twombly and Giotto as his primary influences. He had solo exhibitions at Cheim & Read, NY, The Kunsthalle Merano, Italy and The Museum der Moderne, Rupertinum, Salzburg. Baechler’s work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and The Centre George Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris among other institutions worldwide.
Donald Baechler (1956 - 2022)
“Artist whose breezy-looking, childlike paintings, often of flowers or faces, drew on an eclectic mix of movements and schools”
“His cartoonish images, often culled from art by social outcasts, were touted in the 1980s as a Pop Art renaissance but reviled by others”
”Donald Baechler, Painter of Cartoonish Collages, is Dead at 65”