Born in 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

. Allen Ruppersberg is one of the first generation of American Conceptual art

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

ists that changed the way art was thought about and made. His work includes paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures, installations, and books.

Biography

Ruppersberg graduated with a BFA

Bachelor of Fine Arts

In the United States and Canada, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the visual or performing arts. In some countries such a degree is called a Bachelor of Creative Arts or BCA...

 from the Chouinard Art Institute

Chouinard Art Institute

The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 in Los Angeles, California, by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard .-Founder:...

 in Los Angeles (now California Institute of the Arts

California Institute of the Arts

The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the...

) in 1967. During his early years in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, he began significant relationships with John Baldessari

John Baldessari

John Anthony Baldessari is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California...

, Ed Ruscha, William Wegman

William Wegman (photographer)

William Wegman is an artist best known for creating series of compositions involving dogs, primarily his own Weimaraners in various costumes and poses.-Life and career:...

, and Allan McCollum

Allan McCollum

Allan McCollum is a contemporary American artist who was born in Los Angeles, California in 1944, and now lives and works in New York City. He has spent over forty years exploring how objects achieve public and personal meaning in a world constituted in mass production, focusing most recently on...

. He participated in the groundbreaking 1969 exhibition When Attitudes Become Form, and is recognized as a seminal practitioner of installation art, having produced such influential works as Al's Cafe (1969), Al’s Grand Hotel (1971) and The Novel that Writes Itself (1978).

Exhibitions

Since the late 1960s, his work has been the subject of over sixty solo exhibitions and nearly 200 group shows, and can be found in permanent collections of museums internationally, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

; Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...

; Foundation de Appel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany, among many others. Career highlights include participation in the Whitney Biennial

Whitney Biennial

The Whitney Biennial is a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, USA. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932, the first biennial was in 1973...

s (1970, 1975, 1991), Documenta V (1972), Lyon Biennale (1997), and Sculpture Project Münster

Münster

Münster is an independent city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also capital of the local government region Münsterland...

 (1997). In 1985, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...

 organized a major exhibition of Ruppersberg's work, which subsequently traveled to the New Museum of Contemporary Art

New Museum of Contemporary Art

The New Museum, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to presenting contemporary art from around the world...

, in New York. Exhibitions include Frac Limousin, Limoges, France (1999); Institute of Visual Arts, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1998); and Portikus

Portikus

Portikus is an exhibition hall for contemporary art in Frankfurt am Main, originally founded in 1987 through the initiation of Kasper König, one of the most influential living curators of contemporary art. It's name derives from the surviving portico of the Stadtbibliothek from 1825 that was...

, Frankfurt, Germany (1997). Ruppersberg lives and works in New York, NY, and Los Angeles, California.

Artist's Philosophy

Allen Ruppersberg's philosophy was to use language as a means of expression in its own right. He drew on all the different sectors of the mass media and the consumer society from a critical viewpoint.

Art Works

• "The New Five Foot Shelf" - Installation, Produced and Published in 2003 by Editions Micheline Szwajcer and Michèle Didier, Brussels.
• "Chapter VI" - Artist Book, Produced and Published in 2009 by mfc-michèle didier, Brussels.

External links

Allen Ruppersberg's work at The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Allen Ruppersberg's project at Dia Art Foundation

Allen Ruppersberg's work at Brooke Alexander Gallery

Categories