Mel Bochner

Perhaps best known for his colorful paintings of words, Mel Bochner helped pioneer Conceptual art. In 1966, he mounted “Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art” at ​​the School of Visual Arts in New York, which is often considered the first exhibition of Conceptual art. The relationships between language, space, and color are recurring themes throughout his practice. In his “Measurement” series, Bochner posts the dimensions of an exhibition space directly on the walls. In his iconic thesaurus paintings, he paints a single word and its synonyms, often in vibrant hues. Bochner’s practice also includes photography. The artist has exhibited widely and enjoyed shows in New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, and Sydney, among other cities. Bochner’s work has been acquired for the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Tate, and Moderna Museet, among others, and frequently sells for six figures on the secondary market.