Ronnie Landfield (b. 1947)

Ronnie Landfield was born in the Bronx, NY on January 9, 1947 - the same day as his older brother. As a teenager, he was encouraged to pursue a career as an artist, subsequently creating his first real paintings around the age of 14. He was particularly influenced by a Life magazine article from 1961 on the Abstract Expressionists, most notably: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline.

After stints at the Art Students League, the Kansas City Art Institute, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of California at Berkeley, Landfield’s professional career as a painter began in New York in 1965. The following year, after completing a major series of hard-edge border paintings, success as a painter began to materialize. The famous architect and collector Philip Johnson and the  collector Robert Scull each acquired large paintings works, as did the Sheldon Memorial Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska.

In 1967, Landfield was invited to participate in the Whitney Annual at the end of the year. His work attracted considerable attention, and he was invited to participate in important group exhibitions at the Bykert, Bianchini, and Park Place Galleries in New York.

Landfield joined the David Whitney Gallery in 1969, receiving the honor of being the first one-man show at the new gallery. At the dawn of the new decade, Landfield’s work had begun to be widely exhibited throughout the United States, with the Museum of Modern Art also having acquired a large-scale work.

In 1972, Landfield joined the renowned Andre Emmerich Gallery and by the age of 25, had already enjoyed six solo shows, participated in two Whitney Biennials, and had work placed in several permanent and private collections. Concurrent with his representation by Emmerich, he had solo shows with the Janie C. Lee Gallery in Houston and Corcoran Gallery in Coral Gables, FL.

Landfield was invited to teach painting and fine arts at the School of Visual Arts in 1975, where he taught until 1989. He was one of the original artists represented by the Charles Cowles Gallery in 1980.

Landfield’s work began to shift in the 80s, when he briefly stopped staining in favor of thicker layers. His pictures from this period was the most overt landscapes of his career, including the 1982 work Portal to Paradise, which was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

After reverting back to more pure abstraction in the late 80s and into the 90s, Landfield continued to enjoy critical and commercial success. He returned to teaching in 1994, joining the venerable Art Students League in New York. He was awarded a Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant for painting in 1995.

Over the course of his career, Landfield’s work has been seen in solo and group exhibitions in many major cities in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In 1988, he was the subject of a 10-year retrospective (1978-88) exhibition at the Brunnier Museum in Ames, Iowa. In 2007, there was a major retrospective exhibition of his work at The Butler Institute of American Art entitled Ronnie Landfield: Paintings From Five Decades.

From the artist:

“The two major tendencies in my work were landscape and linear abstractions. My natural tendency was toward color and abstraction. The two tendencies in my work came together in my stained band paintings that I have continued to this day. I paint abstract landscapes to express my feelings that nature which symbolizes truth, beauty and freedom to me is endangered by indifference, overdevelopment and ecological disaster.

My work is intuitive, color is the language I use to express my feelings. Nature inspires the imagery in my paintings and they are expressions of spirit, informed and guided by God. When my paintings succeed they express the mystery of the spirit, emotions, reverence of the awesome power of the universe, through surface, shapes and color. When they matter they realize what I feel within me and touch the observer through positive emotion. The thing is they are always changing.

‍I've always admired Chinese Landscape painting for its beauty, elegance, simplicity and complexity. I admire it because it contains multiple painting styles; (combining geometric boxes (chops), borders and calligraphy;) with landscape techniques that are remarkably similar to modern stain painting. In retrospect, I have realized what an important inspiration Chinese Landscape painting has also been to my work.”

Landfield continues to be represented by the Findlay Galleries (New York and Palm Beach). He has had in excess of 65 solo exhibitions, and his work can be found in the permanent collections of major museums and universities throughout the country, in addition to numerous private and corporate collections.

Source: Ronnie Landfield Studio