Untitled . c. 1961
“Ryman’s daily scrutiny of paintings by Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse, Franz Kline, and others at his job as a guard at MoMA is one of two major formative experiences in the 1950s that remain visible in his work,” the art historian Vittorio Colaizzi writes. “The other is his study of the improvisatory art of jazz.… Playing with fat or lean, broad or narrow, red or green or black, Ryman began by reciting painting’s language, very much in the manner of a musician practicing scales.”
David Zwirner
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