Untitled (Flower)

Gouache and Newspaper Collage.   #CURATORPILL Donald Baechler (Hartford, United States, 1956) became part of the flourishing Lower Manhattan art scene in the 1980s, showing in the East Village and exhibition spaces such as Artists Space and the Drawing Center. Baechler rose to prominence with his depictions of everyday objects and naive simple figures that appeal to the sentimental longing for childhood. As a student at Cooper Union, in the late 1970s, Baechler found himself surrounded by the works of Pop artists and Neo-Expressionists, who played a big role in influencing his style. He got acquainted with Tony Shafrazi, who was focusing on graffiti-oriented works and founded a downtown gallery that represented Baechler, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He uses various mediums in his paintings by combining drawings and collage. His imagery includes nostalgic banal objects that draw associations with childhood, grammar school primers, old maps, and children’s drawings, a skull, a rose, a globe, and a soccer ball. Despite the associations with the graffiti art movement, the artist emphasizes that his art is rooted in abstraction.