This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born in Bronxville, New York, Brice Marden became a Minimalist painter of monochromatic appearing, non-objective canvases.
He
did undergraduate study at Boston University, earned a Master of
Fine Arts degree from Yale University and then moved to New York City
in 1963 where, within a decade, he had achieved international
recognition. Before he was able to support himself financially
with his artwork, he worked as a guard at the Jewish Museum and in 1966
as a studio assistant to Robert Rauschenberg.
In 2001, he established a studio and townhouse home in Greenwich
Village.
Although he considers New York City his base, he also has established
studios from which he regularly works in Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania in
1991 and Tivoli, New York in 2002, and the Greek island of Hydra from
1971.
His first
solo exhibition was in 1966 at Klaus Kertess's Bykert Gallery in New
York, and from then he has had numerous exhibitions in the United
States and Europe including the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in 1975 and
the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1982.
In 2007 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City is hosting a major
retrospective of his work, which is only about 100 paintings, and which
is his first retrospective since the 1975 Guggenheim exhibit. The
2007 show "charts his evolution as a painter, beginning with his
monochromes from the early 1960s" linked to Minimalism. However,
in the 1980s, a major change occurred in his painting "when he replaced
his minimalist approach with a gestural style in which ribbons of color
float and wheel between and on top of one another against a contrasting
background." (Ayers, 60) He also began inserting calligraphy into
his work.
In the early 21st century, Brice Marden is described as being of
particular interest because he is one of the few living highly
respected artists whose primary style is linked to Abstract
Expressionism. Of his working method, he says that he alternates
"periods of long consideration with bursts of frenetic activity"
(Ayers, 60) and that the activity stage has him doing a lot of drawing
that is not always related to painting. He is committed to
freeing himself psychologically so that painterly spontaneity can guide
his creativity.
Sources include:
Robert Ayers, "Brice Marden", Art & Auction, December 2006, pp. 59-60.
Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Art
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Brice Marden was born in Bronxville, New York on October 15, 1938. He
grew up in a middle-class environment in Briarcliff Manor, New York. He
came from a family immersed in the arts, but the idea to be an artist
seems to have been essentially his own and to have matured gradually.
After majoring in fine arts at Boston University, Marden went to Yale
where he received a Master of Fine Arts degree. In 1963 he moved to New
York City; he lived there with his family and worked in an enormous
loft.
Marden first came to public attention with grayish
monochrome paintings done with a mixture of beeswax and oil. In 1968 he
began working with two or three single-color panels joined vertically
or horizontally. In the early 1970s, Marden's art went though a major
transformation; he broke through his self-imposed barrier by
introducing the primary colors. 1980 was another key point in Marden's
development. He began introducing clearly recognizable motifs,
including the tau cross and the door frame.
Marden's summer home
is in Kamini on the Greek island of Hydra, and he enjoys its isolation.
He has married twice and has a son from the first marriage and two
daughters from the second marriage.
Written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.
Sources include:
Maurice Poirier in ARTnews, January 1985
Call it a Mid-Life Crisis by Paul Gardner, in ARTnews, April 1994
From the internet, Artnet.com
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Brice Marden is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Modernism
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