Brice Marden

American painter and printmaker Brice Marden developed a body of work spanning painting and printmaking, from monochrome paintings to the integration of the line. Born in Bronxville in 1938, he died in 2023. After enrolling at the Boston University School of Fine and Applied Arts in 1957, he entered Yale in 1961 and attended Josef Albers’s classes. There he met Richard Serra and Robert Mangold. His first exhibition is listed as taking place in 1963.

From 1964, Marden worked with variations of grey in a series of monochrome paintings; from 1966, he composed paintings by juxtaposing monochrome panels. He subsequently integrated the line into his work and studied Chinese calligraphy intensively. Grove group III, dated 1980, is oil and wax on canvas. In Cold Mountain Series, Zen Study 1, dated 1991, he used etching and aquatint. Extremes, from 2005, is an oil painting on two panels, held at the Musée national d’art moderne in Paris.

An exhibition of his work is recorded at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1975. In 2006, the Museum of Modern Art in New York devoted a retrospective to him. Marden was also interviewed by filmmaker Marion Cajori for her 1992 film about Joan Mitchell, Joan Mitchell: Portrait of an Abstract Painter.

Works recorded at auction

Germann

Jay Couple, 1972-73

Pen-and-ink drawing.

Original catalogue wording

Jay Couple, 1972-73
Tuschfeder-Zeichnung.

Date to be documented

Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed

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