ROBERT THERRIEN

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Robert Therrien (1947–2019) was born in Chicago and studied art at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara and then USC in Los Angeles. 

Therrien’s work created an extensive lexicon of numerous forms and motifs based on his memories, creating imagery that was both familiar and aloof. His vast body of work explores and reworks numerous immediately identifiable forms in a serial manner. He would often revisit and modify these structures in various media, including drawings, sculpture, photography, and painting. His carefully wrought imagery encompassed everything from miniature works on paper to large scale architectural sculptural installations, of which he made a series as some of his final works.

Therrien graduated from the University of Southern California, and remained in Los Angeles for the next forty-five years, living and working in a vast studio which he designed himself.

Major exhibitions of Therrien’s works have been held at Gana Art Center, Seoul (2022); Tate Modern, London (2018); The Contemporary Austin (2015); The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2013); Milwaukee Art Museum (2010); The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2010); Kunstmuseum Basel (2008); Public Art Fund, New York (2005); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2001); and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (1991).

His work is collected by The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Hirshorn, Washington DC; The Tate Modern, London; Kunstmuseum Basel; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New York; and many others.