s Fall / Winter 06 07 - Steidl

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Brice Marden
Paintings on Marble
This volume provides a rare glimpse into the most intimate works of the internationally acclaimed artist Brice Marden.
Twenty years ago, Marden produced a series of small and virtually unknown paintings on the Greek island of Hydra,
which the artist first visited in 1971. Inspired by the island’s ancient marble quarries, Marden created these private
paintings in oil on marble fragments as tokens of his affection and admiration for friends and family. Between 1981 and
1987, the artist made a total of 31 paintings on marble, gathered together here for the first time in a single volume.
The period in which Marden executed these works coincided with enormous changes in his more publicly exhibited
paintings. Until 1981, when the artist began working on marble, his paintings were geometric monochromes, often
based on the post-and-lintel structure so common in ancient Greek architecture. In 1987, the date of his last painting
on marble, Marden presented the first public exhibition of his calligraphic paintings, their organic forms derived from
nature and East Asian calligraphic traditions.
Last exhibited over two decades ago, the paintings on marble are the least well-known part of Marden’s oeuvre. Now,
with a twenty-year perspective on them, perhaps we can better understand the principal role they played as a bridge
between Marden’s more minimal work of the 1960s and 70s to the calligraphic work of the late 1980s through the
present.
Brice Marden was born in 1938, and first exhibited his work in 1963. Some of his recent exhibitions have included:
Brice Marden: Works on Paper 1964–2001, at Instituto Nationale per la Grafica, Rome, Archivio di Stato in the Royal
Palace, Turin, and the Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Münster; Brice Marden: Work
Books 1964–1995, at The Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio, and The
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Brice Marden: Work of the 1990s at The Dallas Museum of Art, The Hirshhorn Museum,
Washington, D.C., and The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and an exhibition of recent paintings and drawings at
The Serpentine Gallery, London. Brice Marden lives and works in New York City and Hydra, Greece.x
Exhibition: A Retrospective of Paintings and Drawings, October 29, 2006 - January 15, 2007 at MoMA, New York
Brice Marden
Paintings on Marble
With an essay by Lisa Liebmann
Book design by Mats Hakansson
88 pages with 30 color plates
8 x 9 in. / 21.8 x 22.8 cm
Clothbound hardcover with dust jacket
US $ 35.00 / £ 20.00 / r 30.00
ISBN 3–86521–163–1
ISBN-13 978-3-86521-163-7
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