b. 1934
Modernist painter of international acclaim, Raymond Saunders dares his audiences to accept the fact that black really is just a color; one among many on the palette of any artist who seeks to emancipate himself and his practice from the binds of identity-driven art.
Having exhibited nationally and internationally since 1952, Saunders, working in a range of media from drawing to assemblage, interrogates the false premise that artists who are black produce something that can be uniquely identified as "black art." His paintings often incorporate traditional and nontraditional materials such as found objects, doilies, ephemera from his personal archives, and chalk. Saunders often works and reworks paintings; sometimes subtracting and other times adding elements that may feel familiar, recalling the work of such contemporaries as Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Yet, his combination of materials and the recurrence of certain motifs-flowers, urns, spirals-are unmistakably Saunders's own unique visual language, to which there is neither a key nor a legend. Like the artist himself, his paintings are masterfully improvisational, defiant, and unexpected.
Saunders was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1934. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Barnes Foundation, the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and California College of the Arts (CCA). He is Professor Emeritus at Cal State East Bay in Hayward and CCA, as well as a President’s Fellow at CCA.
Saunders has also published catalogs and pamphlets; most notably, his 1967 pamphlet Black is a Color, which argues that African American artists need not be limited by racial representations, and argues against the concept of “black” art as a potentially degrading restriction, in favor of a more race-neutral approach to artistic creation.
His awards include the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1963), the Ford Foundation Award (1964), a Prix de Rome Fellowship in Painting (1964-66), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1976), and two National Endowment for the Arts awards (1977 and 1984).
Having exhibited nationally and internationally since 1952, Saunders, working in a range of media from drawing to assemblage, interrogates the false premise that artists who are black produce something that can be uniquely identified as "black art." His paintings often incorporate traditional and nontraditional materials such as found objects, doilies, ephemera from his personal archives, and chalk. Saunders often works and reworks paintings; sometimes subtracting and other times adding elements that may feel familiar, recalling the work of such contemporaries as Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Yet, his combination of materials and the recurrence of certain motifs-flowers, urns, spirals-are unmistakably Saunders's own unique visual language, to which there is neither a key nor a legend. Like the artist himself, his paintings are masterfully improvisational, defiant, and unexpected.
Saunders was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1934. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Barnes Foundation, the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and California College of the Arts (CCA). He is Professor Emeritus at Cal State East Bay in Hayward and CCA, as well as a President’s Fellow at CCA.
Saunders has also published catalogs and pamphlets; most notably, his 1967 pamphlet Black is a Color, which argues that African American artists need not be limited by racial representations, and argues against the concept of “black” art as a potentially degrading restriction, in favor of a more race-neutral approach to artistic creation.
His awards include the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1963), the Ford Foundation Award (1964), a Prix de Rome Fellowship in Painting (1964-66), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1976), and two National Endowment for the Arts awards (1977 and 1984).
