untitled, 2001

mixed media collage
49 x 31-1/2 inches (overall, including suspended objects)
40 x 31 inches (black sheet only)

Label verso: Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco verso

Raymond Saunders was born in Pittsburgh in 1934, and through his studies in the city’s public school system, earned a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.  In 1960 he returned to Pittsburgh to earn his BFA at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.  He went on to earn his MFA at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.  

He exhibited at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in New York in the late 1960s, and in the early 1970s an exhibition traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  He exhibited continuously into the 2000s.  More recently, his work was included in important museum exhibitions, such as Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 and Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power.  In 2022, his work appeared in Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

This year, it was announced that David Zwirner and Andrew Kreps Gallery would co-represent Saunders and kicked off with a solo exhibition, Post No Bills.  David Zwirner will present a solo show of Saunders work at their Paris location in anticipation of Raymond Saunders: Flowers from a Black Garden, which opens March 22, 2025, at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

Learn more about the Carnegie exhibition: https://carnegieart.org/exhibition/raymond-saunders/

Installation Photos from: Raymond Saunders, 40 Years: Paris/Oakland, May 1 - June 12, 2021, 1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco; Photo: Chris Grunder

Interview with Saunders for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (restored, from 1994).