Brice Marden was born in Bronxville, New York in 1938. He studied art at Boston University and Yale University in the late 50s and early 60s, developing a preoccupation with rectangular formats and the repeated use of a muted, unique palette. Marden moved to New York after graduation, where he worked as a guard at the Jewish Museum and came into contact with the work of Jasper Johns, furthering his interest in gridded compositions. He made his first monochromatic single-panel painting in 1964, the year of his first solo exhibition and a stay in Paris, where he was inspired by the work of Alberto Giacometti. The next few years saw his first solo show in New York, his employment as Robert Rauschenberg's assistant and multiple semesters as a painting instructor at the School of Visual Arts. Throughout the 1970s, Marden's work was showcased at Documenta, in a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and in various exhibitions that traveled throughout the United States. Trips to Rome and Pompeii strengthened his interest in Greek and Roman art and architecture. In the mid-1980s, Marden turned away from Minimalism toward gestural abstraction, traveling to Thailand to learn about calligraphy and the art of the brush stroke. Marden currently lives in New York City and Hydra, Greece.
