Robert Ryman “Drawings”

The Pace Gallery (510 W 25th St)

This event has ended.

Pace Gallery presents the first comprehensive exhibition of drawings by Robert Ryman. Bringing together over 50 drawings from private collections as well as museums, including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Dia Art Foundation, and The Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition spans the broad scope Ryman’s career—from his earliest experimentations with drawing in the 1960s to the last drawing he made in 2000. Robert Ryman: Drawings. Dieter Schwarz, Director of Museum Winterthur from 1990 – 2017, has contributed a new essay on Ryman’s drawings for the full-color catalogue accompanying the exhibition.

While one of the most important artists of the postwar period and a pioneering figure within the field of abstract painting, Ryman’s drawings, and their profound significance within his practice, have never been examined before in a focused exhibition. Over half of the works in Robert Ryman: Drawings will make their public premiere in this exhibition, and many others have not been on view publicly in decades, such as The Watermark Series (1968)—last presented in the artist’s mid-career retrospective at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1972.

The long-awaited exhibition underscores the wildly experimental approach that Ryman brought to drawing. For Ryman, drawings were not preparatory or dependent on the medium or support; but rather, encompassed an incredibly diverse range of materials and structures. The works in the exhibition see the artist testing out pastels, graphite, charcoal, conté, pencil, ballpoint pen, and enamel on surfaces ranging from Chemex coffee filter paper and plexiglass to anodized aluminum and matte Mylar panel. Working across these different media, Ryman continually interrogates the idea of what constitutes a drawing, while remaining grounded in a consistent investigation of the line, its formal properties and visual effects.

“As with any painting, you do have a surface to put the line on—what is that? How’s the light going to work on it? and so on, so forth. So the approach is very similar to painting, but the focus is on the line.” — Robert Ryman, in Robert Storr, Robert Ryman. London: Tate Gallery and New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1993.

Robert Ryman (b. 1930, Nashville, Tennessee) has eluded traditional classifications throughout his career, instead referring to his practice as “realist” and in doing so, proposing new perspectives on painting and drawing. His work eschews representation, narrative, illusion, and conventional understandings of realism, instead exploring the material and compositional qualities offered by his media. Spanning drawing, painting, and printmaking, Ryman’s practice engages with aesthetic experience, wherein acts of presenting, perceiving, and contemplating are a part of his work as much as his artistic process.

Ryman has been the subject of over one hundred monographic exhibitions, including retrospectives organized by Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1977); The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Tate Gallery, London (1993), which traveled to Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Haus der Kunst, Munich (2000), which traveled to the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2001); Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, Sakura, Japan (2004); and the Dallas Museum of Art (2005). A recent exhibition of Ryman’s work was held at Dia:Chelsea, New York (2015), which then traveled to Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2017).

Ryman’s work is held in collections throughout the United States and abroad, including Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dia Art Foundation, New York; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, Sakura, Japan; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Menil Collection, Houston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Robert Ryman has been represented by Pace since 1990. The gallery has presented twelve exhibitions dedicated to his work.

Pace is a leading contemporary art gallery representing many of the most significant international artists and estates of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Under the leadership of President and CEO Marc Glimcher, Pace is a vital force within the art world and plays a critical role in shaping the history, creation, and engagement with modern and contemporary art. Since its founding by Arne Glimcher in 1960, Pace has developed a distinguished legacy for vibrant and dedicated relationships with renowned artists. As the gallery approaches the start of its seventh decade, Pace’s mission continues to be inspired by our drive to support the world’s most influential and innovative artists and to share their visionary work with people around the world.

Pace advances this mission through its dynamic global program, comprising ambitious exhibitions, artist projects, public installations, institutional collaborations, and curatorial research and writing. Today, Pace has eight locations worldwide: three galleries in New York; one in London; one in Palo Alto, California; one in Beijing; one in Hong Kong; and one in Seoul. Pace will open its second gallery in Hong Kong in March 2018; and will open a new flagship gallery in New York, anticipated for completion in fall 2019. In 2016, Pace joined with Futurecity to launch FuturePace – an international cultural partnership innovating multidisciplinary projects for art in the public realm.