installation_view_john_mccracken_works_from_1963-2011_david_zwirner_new_york_2013_view_9

 (1934-2011) occupies a singular position within the recent history of American art, as his work melds the restrained formal qualities of Minimalist sculpture with a distinctly West Coast sensibility expressed through color, form, and finish. McCracken developed his early sculptural work while studying painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While experimenting with increasingly three-dimensional canvases, the artist began to produce objects made with industrial materials, including plywood, sprayed lacquer, and pigmented resin, creating the highly reflective, smooth surfaces for which he was to become known. As he described his practice, "In distilling my ideas I was doing something analogous to making poetry—trying, in a way, to say the most with the least."

Beginning in the 1960s, McCracken exhibited steadily in the United States and abroad, and his early work was included in groundbreaking exhibitions such as 

 at the Jewish Museum, New York (1966), and 

 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1967). In 1986, the major survey 

Heroic Stance: The Sculpture of John McCracken 1965–1986

 was organized by P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York, and traveled to the Newport Harbor Art Museum (now the Orange County Museum of Art), Newport Beach, California; Fine Arts Gallery, University of California, Irvine; and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas. In 2011, his work was the subject of a large-scale retrospective at Castello di Rivoli, Turin. Other significant solo shows include those hosted by the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna (1995); Kunsthalle Basel (1995); Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent (2004); Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (2009); and the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, England (2012). 

McCracken’s work has been prominently featured in major group exhibitions worldwide, including 

A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–1968

, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2004); 

, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2006); documenta 12, Kassel, Germany (2007); and 

, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2008). Additionally, the artist’s work was in three shows organized as part of the 2011 region-wide initiative 

Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980

 at the Getty Center, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, California.

McCracken joined David Zwirner in 1997. During his lifetime, the artist had seven solo exhibitions with the gallery in New York, including 

, which was on view at the West 20th Street location in New York, marked the gallery’s most comprehensive presentation to date of the artist’s work. In 2017, David Zwirner presented a solo exhibition in New York of key examples from three discrete groups of McCracken’s work—leaning multipart wall pieces, wall-mounted multipart reliefs, and freestanding columns. The two-person exhibition, 

William Eggleston and John McCracken: True Stories

, was on view at David Zwirner, New York in 2021. A solo exhibition of the artist’s work was on view at David Zwirner, Los Angeles, in 2024.

Work by the artist is held in prominent international collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Art Institute of Chicago; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Harbor, California; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

 John McCracken and Matthew Higgs, "Interview," in 

. Exh. cat. (New York: Zwirner & Wirth, 2005), p. 8.

Portrait of John McCracken. Photo by Joe Goode

Explore solo and group exhibitions from John McCracken at David Zwirner.

John McCracken - Exhibitions

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Read more about John McCracken, including excerpts from selected press articles and publications.

John McCracken - Selected Press

Art Observed, review by J. Shrine

NEW YORK – WILLIAM EGGLESTON AND JOHN MCCRACKEN: “TRUE STORIES” AT DAVID ZWIRNER THROUGH APRIL 17TH, 2021

The New York Times, feature by Deborah Solomon

Did John McCracken Make That Monolith in Utah?

Spike Magaine, feature by Pádraic E. Moore

Pádraic E. Moore on John McCracken’s Red Pyramid (1974)

Artnet, article by Blake Gopnik

John McCracken: Radical Minimalism Meets Traditional Craft

The New Yorker

John McCracken's Otherworldly Oeuvre

The New Yorker, review by Peter Schjeldahl

Way Out West

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John McCracken

No. 26

Theta Two

Rainmaker

Blue Block in Three Parts

Think Pink

Untitled

Green Plank

Red Plank

Installation view of the 1997 solo exhibition John McCracken: Sculpture at David Zwirner

Installation view of the 1995 solo exhibition John McCracken at Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Installation view of the 2014 solo exhibition John McCracken: Works from 1963-2011 at David Zwirner, New York

Untitled (Blue Block)

Untitled (Pink Block)

John

​​Installation view of the 2005 solo exhibition John McCracken: Early Sculpture at Zwirner & Wirth, New York

​​Untitled (Page 10)

​​Untitled (Page 17)

​​Untitled (Page 23)

​​Installation view of the 2013 solo exhibition John McCracken: Works from 1963-2011 at David Zwirner, New York

Zephyr

Teton

Meridien

Installation view of the 2004 solo exhibition John McCracken: New Sculpture at David Zwirner, New York

Installation view of the 2006 solo exhibition John McCracken: New Sculpture at David Zwirner, New York

Installation view of Swift (2007) at documenta 12, Kassel, Germany

Fire

Flare

Chakra

Bright

Magic

Installation view of the 2006 solo exhibition ​John McCracken: New Works in Bronze and Steel​ at David Zwirner, New York

Installation view of the 2011 solo exhibition John McCracken: A Retrospective at Castello di Rivoli – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy

View a selection of artworks by John McCracken that meld the formal qualities of Minimalist sculpture with a West Coast sensibility for color, form, and finish.

John McCracken - Works

, David Zwirner, Los Angeles, 2024. Photo by Elon Schoenholz

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documenta 12, Berlin, Germany, 2007. Photo by Jens Ziehe

, Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, 1995

John McCracken - Artworks & Biography

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