Philip Taaffe

Born in New Jersey in 1955, the American artist Philip Taaffe studied at Cooper Union in New York, where he received a BFA in 1977. His first solo exhibition was held in New York in 1982. His practice draws on the appropriation and integration of elements borrowed both from well-known artists, such as Barnett Newman and Bridget Riley, and from motifs designed by anonymous artisans. Taaffe travels to the Middle East, India, South America and Morocco while building a repertoire of images that informs his work.

His paintings bring together references to Hans Arp, Roman mosaics, Byzantine altarpieces, Islamic mosque decorations and botanical books. He combines a variety of processes and materials: printing, scraping, photographic silkscreen and collage are among the techniques identified in his works. Screen with Double Lambrequin (1989) and California King Snake (Ringed Phase) (1997) are among the works cited by the Broad. An untitled work from 1989, executed in pencil, enamel and oil on paper, bears the signature and date “Ph. Taaffe, 1989”.

The Institut Valencià d’Art Modern organised a retrospective of his work in 2000; in 2008, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg presented The Life of Forms in Art: Paintings 1980-2008, a retrospective devoted to his paintings. In 2011, the Irish Museum of Modern Art presented Anima Mundi, a presentation of thirty paintings made between 2000 and 2010. His works are held, among other institutions, by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. In 2018, Lund Humphries published a monograph devoted to four decades of his career. The Luhring Augustine gallery states that he lives and works in West Cornwall, Connecticut.

Works recorded at auction

Germann

Untitled, 1989

Bleistift, Emaille und Öl auf Papier.

Date to be documented

Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed

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