Robert Kushner, Polychrome Bronze Organic Sculpture Polich Tallix Art Foundry Sleeping Beauty, 1986

Description

Robert Kushner, born in 1949, in California, lives in New York, and is a painter and sculptor. He gained attention … more Robert Kushner, born in 1949, in California, lives in New York, and is a painter and sculptor. He gained attention in the early seventies as a performance artist, using food, fabric and nudity. Kushner was associated with the Pattern and Decoration movement and used fabric collage in large-scale, bold paintings of the figure. Since 1987 he has used flowers as the subject of his paintings, more recently adding a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables to his repertoire. Kushner's use of rich color harmonies and bold, fluid drawing, mark his belief in the importance of beauty in our lives. Kushner draws from a unique range of influences, including Islamic and European textiles, Henri Matisse, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Demuth, Pierre Bonnard, Tawaraya Sotatsu, Ito Jakuchu, Qi Baishi, and Wu Changshuo. Kushner’s work combines organic representational elements with abstracted geometric forms in a way that is both decorative and modernist. Kushner has collaborated with Master printer Bud Shark since 1982 on various monotypes and lithographs. These exuberant, sensuous prints often include collage elements, including glitter, chine-collé, metal leaf and hand coloring.
Kushner's work has been exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe, and Japan and has been included in the Whitney Biennial three times and twice at the Venice Biennale in Italy. He was the subject of solo exhibitions at both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum. A mid-career retrospective of his work was organized by the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art.
Robert Kushner's prints include a lithograph with gold leaf titled White Lilac and a series of monotypes that include Blue Bells II, Geranium IV, and Oregon Grape III. Robert Kushner lives in New York and has completed several major public commissions. He has exhibited his work widely and is represented in the collections of The Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles County Museum, The Metropolitan Museum, NY, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Tate Gallery, London, The Whitney Museum, NY and others.
In 1997 Hudson Hills Press published the monograph, Robert Kushner: Gardens of Earthly Delight by Alexandra Anderson-Spivey. The New Jersey Center for Visual Arts mounted the survey exhibition Robert Kushner: 25 Years of Making Art in 1998.

Kushner's work is represented in numerous important public collections:
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Art Collection of the United States Embassy, Panama
Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Australia
The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME
The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
The Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH
The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, HI
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Galleria degli Ufizzi, Florence, Italy
Gröninger Museum, Gröningen, the Netherlands
Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii
J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, CA
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
Museum Ludwig, St. Petersburg, Russia
Museum Moderner Kunst - Palais Lichtenstein, Vienna, Austria
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Neue-Galerie-Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen, Germany
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Rockefeller Center, New York, NY
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
The Tate Gallery, London, England
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Select Exhibitions:
Robert Kushner: 30 Literary Nudes, Luis De Jesus, Santa Monica, CA
Robert Kushner: The Language of Flowers, DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY
The Pleasure of it All: Robert Kushner’s Flower Paintings, Indianapolis Museum of Art,
Celestial Banquet, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA
Robert Kushner, Japanese Ceramics, Yoshiaki Inoue Gallery, Osaka, Japan.
The Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO
Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne, Germany
Crown Point Press, New York, NY
Grand Lobby Installation, The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Paintings on Paper, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Grafiek, American Graffiti Gallery, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Souvenirs, Studio Marconi, Milan, Italy
Castelli-Goodman-Solomon, East Hampton, NY
Galerie Bischofberger, Zurich, Switzerland
Asher/Faure Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Akira Ikeda Gallery, Nagoya, Japan
Barbara Gladstone Editions, New York, NY
The Dance, The Kiss, Daniel Templon Gallery, Paris, France
Persian Line Part II Holly Solomon Gallery, New York, NY less