Katherine Bernhardt

Katherine Bernhardt’s (b. 1975) boundless visual appetite has established her as one of the most energetic painters working today. Her trust in the fundamental underpinnings of painting gives her the freedom to depict anything she wants, and the democratizing surfaces of her canvases work without illusion, perspective, logical scale shifts, or atmosphere. With Bernhardt’s blunt yet lyrical approach, each painting has the feel of a complete thought that engages rich and raucous free association.

Bernhardt was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2000.

The artist has been the subject of solo exhibitions worldwide. Katherine Bernhardt: Neonfarbblendluminanzwuchtgemaeldenetzhautkollisionsgefahr is currently on view at Halle Für Kunst Steiermark, Graz, Austria. A retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work opened at the Hangaram Art Museum in the Seoul Arts Center in 2025, before traveling to Gangneung Art Museum Sorol, Korea, later that year, and Seongnam Arts Center, Cube Art Museum, Seongnam-si, Korea, in 2026. Also in 2025, A Match Made in Heaven, a two-person presentation with fashion designer Jeremy Scott, was held at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas. In 2018, the solo exhibition Katherine Bernhardt: Watermelon World was held at the Museo Mario Testino (MATE) in Lima, Peru. In 2017, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, presented FOCUS: Katherine Bernhardt. In the same year, the artist painted a sixty-foot-long mural entitled XXL Superflat Pancake for the St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum. Bernhardt has created a permanent installation for Club Caribe, Cidra, Puerto Rico, and a pool painting at the Nautilus South Beach, Miami Beach (both 2015).

Her work has also been included in significant group exhibitions, such as We Fight to Build a Free World: An Exhibition by Jonathan Horowitz, Jewish Museum, New York (2020); Animal Farm, an exhibition curated by Sadie Laska at The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut (2017); NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, Rubell Museum, Miami (2015; traveled to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, through 2017); and Bad Touch, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago (2002).

In 2022, Why is a mushroom growing in my shower? was held at David Zwirner London, marking the artist’s first solo presentation at the gallery. David Zwirner Hong Kong presented a solo exhibition of works by Bernhardt in 2023. Sidewalk Chalk, a presentation of new paintings by the artist, was on view at the gallery’s Los Angeles location in 2025.

Work by the artist is found in prominent public and museum collections worldwide, including The Brant Foundation, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Rubell Museum, Miami; and the San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas. Bernhardt lives and works in St. Louis.