Raymond Saunders, the abstract painter known for challenging racial categorizations in art and pioneering assemblage techniques, died Monday at age 90, according to his galleries David Zwirner, Andrew Kreps, and Casemore.
The Pittsburgh-born artist’s death came just one week after the closing of his first major museum retrospective, “Flowers from a Black Garden,” at Carnegie Museum of Art in his hometown.
Saunders gained prominence in 1967 with his essay “Black Is a Color,” which argued that Black artists should not be confined to creating work solely about their racial identity. “I am not responsible for anyone’s entertainment,” he wrote, advocating for artistic freedom beyond racial expectations.
His distinctive assemblage-style paintings combined urban materials like doors and signage with gestural brushwork on black backgrounds that evoked classroom blackboards. This approach earned him a Rome Prize Fellowship in 1964, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976, and two National Endowment for the Arts Awards.
Born in 1934, Saunders studied at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and earned his BFA from Carnegie Institute of Technology. He later completed an MFA at California College of Arts and Crafts, where he became a longtime professor while living in Oakland.
His work is held in major collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions featuring his work included “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power” at Tate Modern in 2017 and “Paris Noir” at Centre Pompidou earlier this year.
Saunders held his first solo exhibition in 1966 at Terry Dintenfass Gallery in New York. After a 20-year absence from New York solo shows, he returned with exhibitions at Andrew Kreps in 2022 and David Zwirner in 2024.
“His work will continue to be seen and discovered by new audiences for many decades to come as he takes his rightful place in art history,” David Zwirner said in a statement.
Image Courtesy: Art News Paper
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