Ross Bleckner

Born 1949 in New York

Lives and works in New York

Ross Bleckner’s paintings are an investigation of change, loss, and memory, often suggesting meditations on the body, health and disease, much like a memento mori. His immersive paintings, whether pure abstraction of stripes and dots or representations of birds, flowers, and brains, elicit a powerful hypnotic and dizzying effect. Smoothly layered on the canvas surface against a darker background, Bleckner’s famous multicolored volumetric circles or flowers look like they are viewed under a microscope.

Ross Bleckner rose to prominence in New York in the 1980s. To this day, he is the youngest artist to receive a midcareer retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, at the age of 45. Recent exhibitions include the Neues Museum Nürnberg; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; Reina Sofia, Madrid; L.A. County Museum, Los Angeles; Kunstmuseum Luzern; and Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern. 

His paintings can be found in numerous major museum collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo; Sammlung Goetz, Munich; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.