Robert Kushner

Art Brokerage: Robert Kushner American Artist: B. 1949 - Robert Kushner, who emerged in the early 1970s as a performance artist whose costumes were as important as the performance, was a founder of the Pattern and Decoration movement of that era. In the early 1980s his primary materials were acrylic paint on unstretched fabric, but he turned away from pattern and painted the human figure from live models. In 1986 he turned to more conventional oil painting on canvas concentrating on flowers which he has continued into the present. Kushner painted the floral elements on the Kakishibu during a residency at OXY Gallery in Osaka in May, 2001. The flowers selected for this project are those classically associated by the Japanese with spring time: peony, iris, spring grasses. After being exhibited in Osaka in this first stage, the sheets were shipped to New York, where Kushner began to apply many varying shades of gold and silver leaf. The rich earthy color of the background as well as the colors depicting the flowers complement and harmonize with the spectrum of gold and coated silver leaf. Kushner has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally. His work is in the collections of many museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Tate Gallery in London and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Listings wanted by Art Brokerage.