Donald Baechler American, 1956-2022

Donald Baechler came of age as a painter in the early 1980s, when he began exhibiting internationally, and critics have stated that his work “places him in the painterly tribe of Twombly, Ryman, Rauschenberg and Schwitters.”

Baechler worked from a great inventory of worldly images. Recorded on slides and collected in the archives of his enormous Lower Manhattan studio, they are the sources for many of the compelling images in his paintings and graphic work. The cast of characters — which also includes himself — come from every source imaginable, and are stamped, silk-screened, projected, drawn, painted, printed, or collaged onto surfaces. Then the process begins: underpainting, overpainting, canceling, adding, subtracting, and editing until the final work emerges. Baechler has also worked extensively in the graphic medium. The artist has a large international following and his work can be seen in museums around the world.