Mark Grotjahn

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Mark Grotjahn

Mark Grotjahn
Born 1968
Pasadena, California, U.S.
Occupation Painter

Mark Grotjahn (born 1968) is an American painter best known for abstract work and bold geometric paintings. Grotjahn lives and works in Los Angeles.

Early life and education

Grotjahn was born in Pasadena, but grew up in the Bay Area.[1] His father Michael, a psychiatrist, had emigrated from Berlin, Germany in 1936.[2] He received his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1995, he was an artist-in-residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine. When he moved to Los Angeles, he opened a gallery with his friend Brent Peterson and started showing and working with other artists.[3]

Work

In the mid-1990s, Grotjahn began working on a stream of densely worked colored pencil drawings, followed by oil paintings, which focused on perspective investigations such as dual and multiple vanishing points.[4] The way Grotjahn paints grew out of conceptual sign making; he would faithfully reproduce peculiar graphics and phrases from local storefronts in his native Los Angeles. He would then trade these handmade copies to the storeowners in exchange for the original signage.[5]

Later Grotjahn began working with colored pencils to develop "perspective drawings" and then perspectival paintings.[6] In his multi-colored drawings, Grotjahn's working method is systematic and rigorous but also allows for intuition and chance. He first begins by mapping out the triangular radii in black pencil. For each work in this series of drawings, Grotjahn then sets aside the required number of colour pencils, choosing colours that ‘hold together' in value and intensity. Having laid them next to him, he chooses one pencil at random and uses it to colour in a single, pre-segmented wing section.[7]

Since 1997 Grothjahn has been exploring the radiant motif in his paintings and drawings. This sustained investigation is illustrated in his Butterfly series[8] Here, he draws on Renaissance perspectival techniques for the structures and subjects of his multiple-vanishing-point butterfly patterns in order to create the illusion that his geometries stretch, shrink, approach, and recede.[9] While they appear at first glance to be rigidly formal and graphic,[10] the Butterfly Paintings essentially consist of a radiating sequence of parallel lines are executed in thick oil in such a way that an illusion of perspective is generated by the painting's butterfly form.[11] The horizontal and vertical lines are rarely, if ever, horizontal or perpendicular to the edges of the canvas.[12] A later series of large, vertical Face Paintings is based on the simple geometric structure of eyes, nose, and mouth.[13] Using sheets of cardboard that are primed and mounted on linen as the ground, Grotjahn employs brush and palette knife to extensively build layer upon layer of oil paint to almost sculptural ends.[14]

Grotjahn's mask sculptures extend the artist's idiosyncratic investment in the process and ritual of painting into three dimensions.[15] Cast in bronze from spontaneous cardboard assemblages and often painted with the fingers, most of them rest on pedestals, while a few are wall-mounted, referring directly to painting.[16]

In 2011/12, Grotjahn was Visiting Scholar at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco.[17]

Exhibitions

Grotjahn's solo exhibitions include shows at UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2005); the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2006); and the Portland Art Museum, Oregon. His work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at galleries and museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, and Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, in Germany, and the Royal Academy in London. He was included in the 54th Carnegie International in 2004 and the Whitney Biennial in 2006.

Collections

Recognition

Grotjahn is the recipient of the 2003 Penny McCall Foundation Award.[31]

Influences

Mark Grotjahn is often regarded as one of many contemporary painter revisiting late Modernism, alongside fellow painters Tomma Abts, Wade Guyton, Eileen Quinlan, Sergei Jensen, and Cheyney Thompson.[32]

Position on the art market

Demand for Grotjahn's works has climbed steadily in recent years, with prices now typically reaching $500,000 to $800,000.[33] In 2010, Grotjahn's oil on linen painting Untitled (Lavender Butterfly Jacaranda over Green) (2004) was sold for $1,5 million against its presale estimate of $500–700,000 at Christie's New York.[34]

Grotjahn is represented by Anton Kern Gallery in New York, Gagosian Gallery in London, Blum and Poe Gallery in Los Angeles, Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago and Kaikai Kiki Gallery in Tokyo [35]

Controversy on royalties

In 2011, Grotjahn sued MOCA trustee Dean Valentine, one of his earliest collectors, to recover a 5% royalty for three artworks that Valentine resold. The biggest sale in dispute took place in 2008 at Phillips de Pury & Company in New York, when Valentine sold Untitled (Blue Face Grotjahn) (2005) for $1,217,000,[36] including premium.[37] By Grotjahn's estimation, Valentine had made $3 million by selling the three artworks.[38] After more than a year of court filings and court-ordered mediation, both parties settled the dispute in 2012 over the payment of the resale royalty specified by the California Resale Royalty Act. Valentine agreed to pay Grotjahn $153,255; this figure includes the 5% resale royalty (plus interest) on one painting and one drawing that the collector had bought and resold, amounting to $68,255, plus $85,000 toward Grotjahn’s legal fees.[39]

External links

References

  1. ↑ Arcy Douglass (October 6, 2010), Interview with Mark Grotjahn Portland Art.
  2. ↑ Cornelius Tittel (June 8, 2013), "Besser ein reicher Künstler sein als ein armer" Die Welt
  3. ↑ Arcy Douglass (October 6, 2010), Interview with Mark Grotjahn Portland Art.
  4. ↑ Mark Grotjahn: Dancing Black Butterflies, February 26 - March 11, 2008 Gagosian Gallery, New York.
  5. ↑ Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Lavender Butterfly Jacaranda over Green) (2004) Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale, 10 November 2010, New York.
  6. ↑ Mark Grotjahn Carnegie International.
  7. ↑ Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (large colored butterfly white background 10 wings) (2004) Phillips de Pury & Company, London.
  8. ↑ Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Eleven Color Variant Separated With White Butterfly 43.04) (2011) Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Session I including Works from the Peter Norton Collection, 9 November 2011, New York.
  9. ↑ Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (2 Greens Cream Black Butterfly 74) (2002) MoMA Collection, New York.
  10. ↑ Mark Grotjahn, February 17 – April 29, 2012 Aspen Art Museum.
  11. ↑ Untitled Mark Grotjahn, (Black Butterfly M02G) (2002) Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale, 6 February 2008, London.
  12. ↑ Arcy Douglass (October 6, 2010), Interview with Mark Grotjahn Portland Art.
  13. ↑ Mark Grotjahn: Nine Faces, May 5 - June 25, 2011 Anton Kern Gallery, New York.
  14. ↑ Mark Grotjahn: Seven Faces, February 27 – April 3, 2010 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
  15. ↑ Mark Grotjahn, February 17 – April 29, 2012 Aspen Art Museum.
  16. ↑ Mark Grotjahn, September 13 - October 27, 2012 Gagosian Gallery, New York.
  17. ↑ Visiting Faculty/Artists California College of the Arts, San Francisco.
  18. ↑ Mark Grotjahn Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica.
  19. ↑ Mark Grotjahn: Seven Faces, February 27 – April 3, 2010 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.
  20. ↑ Mark Grotjahn: Seven Faces, February 27 – April 3, 2010 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.
  21. ↑ Tyler Green (July 28, 2010), Acquisition: Mark Grotjahn at Cleveland ARTINFO.
  22. ↑ Mark Grotjahn Gagosian Gallery.
  23. ↑ Mark Grotjahn: Seven Faces, February 27 – April 3, 2010 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.
  24. ↑ Mark Grotjahn MoMA Collection, New York.
  25. ↑ Mark Grotjahn: Seven Faces, February 27 – April 3, 2010 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.
  26. ↑ Mark Grotjahn: Seven Faces, February 27 – April 3, 2010 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.
  27. ↑ Mark Grotjahn: Seven Faces, February 27 – April 3, 2010 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.
  28. ↑ Mark Grotjahn San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
  29. ↑ Mark Grotjahn: Seven Faces, February 27 – April 3, 2010 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.
  30. ↑ Mark Grotjahn: Seven Faces, February 27 – April 3, 2010 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.
  31. ↑ 3rd annual benefit auction for The Drawing Center: Mark Grotjahn Drawing Center, New York.
  32. ↑ Roberta Smith (September 22, 2006), Art in Review; Mark Grotjahn New York Times.
  33. ↑ Ellen Gamerman (February 18, 2012), In Aspen, Art That Gets You Access to the Slopes Wall Street Journal.
  34. ↑ http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5371720
  35. ↑ http://en.gallery-kaikaikiki.com/category/artists/grotjahn/
  36. ↑ Lot 108: Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Blue Face Grotjahn) (2005) Phillips de Pury & Company, New York.
  37. ↑ Jori Finkel (October 25, 2011), Artist Mark Grotjahn in battle royal over royalties Los Angeles Times.
  38. ↑ Jori Finkel (October 25, 2011), Artist Mark Grotjahn in battle royal over royalties Los Angeles Times.
  39. ↑ Jori Finkel (February 8, 2012) Dean Valentine and Mark Grotjahn settle on resale royalties Los Angeles Times.
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