BIOGRAPHY
Ron Gorchov first rose to prominence at the height of the New York School movement in the early 1960’s, counting Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning among his friends and colleagues. Gorchov was included in several successful solo and group exhibitions between 1960 and 1966, including Rooms the now famous group exhibition that inaugurated PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, NY. During this time Gorchov experimented with his first structured works that began to reject the rectangular format of the conventional canvas. Gorchov stated in 2011; “I wanted to change the context of painting because I opposed the ad-hoc acceptance of the rectangle, wanting a more intentional form that would create a new kind of visual space,”
Initially creating a bowed form by dipping wire into plastic liquids, Gorchov soon created his first concave supports, the earliest of which he produced in Mark Rothko’s former studio. This acted as the catalyst for Gorchov’s early development of an alternative to the formalism of the time, most famously championed by the art critic Clement Greenberg. Gorchov’s work re-emerged in the mid-1970s within the context of post-Minimal art, where he first presented the distinctive saddle paintings for which he has come to be celebrated.
Among his colleagues who pioneered painting towards three dimensions, including Frank Stella, Richard Tuttle, Ellsworth Kelly and Elizabeth Murray, Gorchov’s unflinching approach to the medium has produced a sophisticated and ever developing body of work that marks him out as one of the most important and pioneering painters of the last 60 years.
Ron Gorchov’s work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Hall Art Foundation (2023) Cheim & Read, New York (2019); Modern Art, London (2019); Maruani Mercier, Brussels (2019); Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (2018); Vito Schnabel Gallery, St. Moritz (2016); Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2014); Centro Atlántico de Arte Modern, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2011); and MoMA PS1, New York (2006). Gorchov’s paintings are held by major museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; Milwaukee Art Museum; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.
