SwissArtGallery · Documented identity
Born in 1948 in Jersey City, New Jersey, Jonathan Lasker is an American artist whose painting practice is grounded in preparatory drawings and studies. He studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York, then at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. His process begins with drawings on small pads of paper, from which he selects sketches that he develops into painted oil studies. The selected compositions go through several variations before being transferred freehand onto large canvases. Painted in October 1977, Illinois is a work that Lasker considers a decisive milestone in his early career. In 1989, he received a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives and works in New York.
His work has been the subject of retrospectives at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Kunstmuseum in St. Gallen, the Power Plant in Toronto, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. In 2003, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía presented Jonathan Lasker: Paintings, Drawings, Studies 1977-2003, from 5 June to 7 September. The exhibition Paintings From Five Decades was shown at the Museum of Recent Art in Bucharest from 20 February to 12 May 2024. Drawings and Studies was presented at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle from 25 October 2025 to 11 October 2026. His works are held in public collections such as Mudam, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Moderna Museet, Museum Ludwig, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art. His essays, several of which are described as brief and aphoristic, are collected in Complete Essays 1984-1998, published by Edgewise in 1998, and later in New Complete Essays, 1984-2019, published by the same publisher in 2020. In 2005, Edgewise Press also published Jonathan Lasker: Expressions Become Things.
This profile brings together identity references for Jonathan Lasker and paintings, drawings and works on paper documented in auction catalogues.
6 references are documented at Germann, Kornfeld, Piguet, Lempertz. Each record links to its source; the amounts are not a general valuation of the artist’s work.
Farbstift und Graphit auf Karton
Ohne Titel
Farbstift und Graphit auf Karton
Auction date : 2026-06-06
Published result : 4318 EUR
Including buyer’s premium
Estimate : 4000
View the lot at the auction house ↗Acrylic and Indian ink on light cardboard
Catalogue period : 2025-09-09
Published result : 3300 CHF
Hammer price, excluding fees
Estimate : CHF 3000
View the lot at the auction house ↗
Oil and felt-tip pen on paper
Untitled (Study for "The Outsides Are In"), 1992
Öl und Filzstift auf Papier.
Catalogue period : 2025-06-23
Published result : 3200 CHF
Hammer price, excluding fees
Estimate : CHF 3000–5000
View the lot at the auction house ↗
Oil on paper
Sans titre
huile sur papier
Catalogue period : 2021-03-02 — 2021-03-17
Published result : 1000 CHF
Fees not specified in the available data
Estimate : CHF 1000–1500
View the lot at the auction house ↗Oil on canvas on wood
A Sum and its Parts
Öl auf Leinwand auf Holz
Catalogue period : 2019-06-13
Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed
Estimate : CHF 20000
View the lot at the auction house ↗Oil on canvas on wood
Story with Affect
Öl auf Leinwand auf Holz
Catalogue period : 2019-06-13
Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed
Estimate : CHF 20000
View the lot at the auction house ↗SwissArtGallery documentary note based on the cited sources. Titles, media and qualifications are provided in the profile language; the original catalogue wording remains available in each record.
Documentation updated : 2026-10-19
