American, b. 1942
Gary Stephan (b.1942), is an American abstract painter from Brooklyn, NY. He lives and works as a painter and instructor at the School of Visual Arts MFA program, in New York.
Stephan is a postmodern artist known for his uniquely idiosyncratic abstract paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, photography and video art.
His works are abstract in form, but pictorial in nature, using several visual tools and colors, which he then uses to undermine a coherent view. Stephan surrounds his marks with shaped areas of negative space that destabilize figure/ground relationships, using discontinuous areas of similar color that visually unite to create the impression of a singular shape.
As a graduate of Parsons School of Design and the Pratt Institute, he moved on to receive his Masters of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1967. Upon graduation, Stephan returned to New York, where he was a studio assistant to Jasper Johns until he started showing with the David Whitney Gallery in 1970. This, in addition to showing at the Whitney Biennial Exhibitions of 1971 and 1973 prompted the New York Times' art critic, Roberta Smith, to refer to his work as “among the most closely watched developments of the early ’70s.”
Stephan is a recipient of awards from the National Endowment of the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and most recently a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award.
Stephan is a postmodern artist known for his uniquely idiosyncratic abstract paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, photography and video art.
His works are abstract in form, but pictorial in nature, using several visual tools and colors, which he then uses to undermine a coherent view. Stephan surrounds his marks with shaped areas of negative space that destabilize figure/ground relationships, using discontinuous areas of similar color that visually unite to create the impression of a singular shape.
As a graduate of Parsons School of Design and the Pratt Institute, he moved on to receive his Masters of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1967. Upon graduation, Stephan returned to New York, where he was a studio assistant to Jasper Johns until he started showing with the David Whitney Gallery in 1970. This, in addition to showing at the Whitney Biennial Exhibitions of 1971 and 1973 prompted the New York Times' art critic, Roberta Smith, to refer to his work as “among the most closely watched developments of the early ’70s.”
Stephan is a recipient of awards from the National Endowment of the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and most recently a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award.
