Robert Ryman

Ryman selected and installed the works in the exhibition which focuses on thirteen new paintings completed in the past year for this project and an equal number of paintings from the 1980s. A small number of earlier works beginning with a painting from 1958 were chosen to supplement the recent paintings. Ryman also designed the exhibition space on the fourth floor of this building, controlling light from skylights, south windows, and north windows, and creating five galleries of proportions and sizes to complement his paintings. The paintings will be shown only with natural light during most exhibition hours. A catalogue documenting this project with Dia Art Foundation is available including installation photographs and extensive interviews with Ryman.

This is the first major exhibition of Ryman's work in New York since his retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1972. His work has been presented in numerous gallery exhibitions and has been the subject of retrospectives in Amsterdam, London, Zurich, Paris and Dusseldorf. He recently has had one person exhibitions at the Art Institue of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and will be represented in the upcoming Carnegie International in Pittsburgh.

This project extends the commitment and program of Dia Art Foundation to support artists to undertake ambitious projects which would be difficult to realize through other institutions and organizations. The unusually long period of the exhibition-for an entire season from October 1988 through June 1989--has been planned to allow a large public from the metropolitan New York area, the United States, and other countries to have the opportunity to view the exhibition over time and through the possibility of repeated visits.

Robert Ryman