Robert Ryman

Robert Ryman is considered one of the preeminent painters of the past fifty years. This book features over two dozen of Ryman's works from the 1960s to the present, all of which demonstrate his keen desire to investigate the essential properties of a painting - its color, surface, texture, support, and relationship to the wall on which it is displayed - in order to achieve direct and unmediated painterly effects.
Drawn from distinguished private collections in Dallas and elsewhere as well as from major museum holdings, many of the works comprising this book have never before been exhibited in public or published. The illustrations document the artist's career-long experimentation with and deviation from white - a basic, universal "color" that becomes highly flexible and suggestive in Ryman's hands - as well as his interest in using a variety of surfaces on which to paint, from industrial metal to linen to canvas. Robert Ryman has created an unexpectedly varied, complex, and broad body of work within his chosen boundaries and continues to create some of today's most challenging paintings.

Charles Wylie is the Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art.