Donald Baechler Biography
Donald Baechler
Donald Baechler was born in 1956 in Hartford, Connecticut.
An artist who is difficult to place in a specific artistic movement, trained in the context of Pop Art but fundamentally alien to it, a detached neo-expressionist and, at the same time, attracted by the line, form and balance of painting. In his works, often reworkings of collages, he condensed pop images and everyday objects, flowers, ice cream, balloons, skulls and old maps, represented in their most elementary form, innocent but not neutral, to recreate what he called the illusion of history.
From 1974 to 1977 he attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, specializing in painting at the Cooper Union in 1978. After meeting some German students and intrigued by the new painting scene in Germany, he continued his education at the Staatliche Hochschule fuer Bildende Künste Städelschule in Frankfurt on the Main. In 1980 he returned to New York, here he frequented the artistic environment of Lower Manhattan and exhibited in various spaces in the East Village. The turning point came with the acquaintance of Tony Shafrazi who, at that time, was opening a gallery dedicated to the lively scene of graffiti and new figuration, with artists such as Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as Baechler himself.
Donald Baechler has held solo exhibitions in galleries, institutions and museums all over the world, from the Kunsthalle Merano to the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg, from Sperone to Lucio Amelio. His works are exhibited in the collections of MoMA – Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Center George Pompidou and Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.
Donald Baechler dies on April 4, 2022, at age 65.
