May 24, 2021
We’re pleased to announce exclusive global representation of the Estate of Robert Ryman and of American artist Merrill Wagner. Ryman and Wagner were married in 1969, until Ryman’s death in 2019. American artist Robert Ryman (1930–2019) is widely celebrated for his tactile monochromatic works, which he executed using a range of painterly media on various supports, including paper, canvas, linen, aluminum, vinyl, and newsprint. Emerging in the 1960s, Ryman eschewed self-contained representational and abstract imagery, instead giving precedence to the physical gesture of applying paint to a support. Since the 1960s, American artist Merrill Wagner (b. 1935) has created a distinctive body of work that is characterized by its expansive approach to abstraction and to painting. In its emphasis on the materiality and mutability of paint, her inventive work elides the categories of painting, relief, sculpture, and installation.
Image: Robert Ryman, Untitled, 2010
Image: Robert Ryman, Winsor 34, 1966 (detail)