For almost 60 years, Ryman devoted himself to making paintings without pictorial or symbolic content, instead focusing his attention on the physical properties of materials and their effects. In works that range from intimate to monumental, and flat to three-dimensional, Ryman explored the basic assumptions of painting – that it involves paint, on a surface, hung on a wall. His body of work is marked equally by surprise and subtlety, sameness and difference, and by shifting uses of paint, gesture, support, size, line, fastenings to the wall and space.
Organised by Professor Jo Applin FBA, Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the History of Art and Director of the Centre for the Art of the Americas.
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