Walter Darby Bannard

Walter Darby Bannard News: Walter Darby Bannard (1934-2016), October  3, 2016 - ArtForum

Walter Darby Bannard (1934-2016)

October 3, 2016 - ArtForum

Walter Darby Bannard, an American abstract painter and a pioneer of Color Field painting in the 1950s, died on Sunday, October 2, in Miami at the age of eighty-two.

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Walter Darby Bannard News: Review on Walter Darby Bannard | Minimal Colorfield Paintings, June  3, 2015 - Phyllis Tuchman for Artforum

Review on Walter Darby Bannard | Minimal Colorfield Paintings

June 3, 2015 - Phyllis Tuchman for Artforum

A dozen or so canvases from 1958 to 1965 that were on view recently at Berry Campbell made it clear why Bannard, who is now eighty, was selected for these shows. Even back in the day, the emergent artist’s Minimalist compositions must have seemed timeless. These are, to be sure, smart paintings. And while it’s tempting to raise the specter of formalism today, it’s perhaps more apt to suggest that the nearly five-foot-square canvases call to mind a foreign language that’s almost been forgotten.

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Walter Darby Bannard News: Review of Walter Darby Bannard , April 18, 2015 - Altoon Sultan via Painters Table

Review of Walter Darby Bannard

April 18, 2015 - Altoon Sultan via Painters Table

Altoon Sultan blogs about Walter Darby Bannard: Minimal Color Field Paintings, 1958-1965 at Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, through April 18, 2015.

Sultan writes: "Bannard's color is unique and surprising. In the exhibition ... there are pinks and warm reds and cool greens, and all colors confound expectations with their pleasurable seriousness. After all...pink? When I think of a great painter using pink, Philip Guston comes to mind; in his works pink becomes a subversive color. Bannard's pink isn't brash and saturated, but subtle; it looks like a mixed hue. The circle sits solidly in its field, perfectly balanced, slightly above the midpoint of a rectangle slightly taller than square. The pink becomes transcendent."

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Walter Darby Bannard: Minimal Color, Lush Form

April 15, 2015 - Altoon Sultan

When I think of minimalist painting, colors that come to mind are primaries and black, as in Mondrian, red/blue/green as in Ellsworth Kelly, white in Robert Ryman: simple clear colors. Robert Mangold uses some offbeat hues, grays and oranges and lemon yellows. But Walter Darby Bannard's color is unique and surprising. In the exhibition at Berry Campbell Gallery "Walter Darby Bannard: Minimal Color Field Paintings, 1958-1965" there are pinks and warm reds and cool greens, and all colors confound expectations with their pleasurable seriousness.

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Walter Darby Bannard News: Presentational: Walter Darby Bannard on his early reductive paintings, April  8, 2015 - Franklin Einspruch for Artcritical

Presentational: Walter Darby Bannard on his early reductive paintings

April 8, 2015 - Franklin Einspruch for Artcritical

The majority of what I know about art is owed to two things. The first is making a lot of paintings and drawings. The second is conversations with Walter Darby Bannard.

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Walter Darby Bannard News: Berry Campbell featured on Artsy, March 19, 2015

Berry Campbell featured on Artsy

March 19, 2015

“Walter Darby Bannard: Minimal Color Field Paintings, 1958-1965” featured in Artsy Gallery Guide

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Walter Darby Bannard News: Berry Campbell featured on Artnet, March 17, 2015

Berry Campbell featured on Artnet

March 17, 2015

Berry Campbell exhibition, Walter Darby Bannard | Minimalist Color Field Paintings 1958-1965, recommended on Artnet News

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Walter Darby Bannard News: Bravo, Bannard: A Major Show in Chelsea, March  4, 2014 - Piri Halasz

Bravo, Bannard: A Major Show in Chelsea

March 4, 2014 - Piri Halasz

Walter Darby Bannard is a hedonist, and proud of it. He believes that the role of art is to give pleasure. It’s not meant to be an intellectual exercise, or political propaganda, or even an illustration of something that it’s not (though he has plenty of room in his lexicon for representational painters, past and present, whose work pleasures the eye, regardless of what else it may or may not do).

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Walter Darby Bannard News: Walter Darby Bannard at Berry Campbell Gallery in Chelsea, February 19, 2014 - Artfix Daily

Walter Darby Bannard at Berry Campbell Gallery in Chelsea

February 19, 2014 - Artfix Daily

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, February 11, 2014 – Berry Campbell is pleased to announce, Walter Darby Bannard: Dragon Water, featuring sixteen paintings from the 1970s. Bannard, a leader in the development of Color Field Painting in the late 1950s, has been committed to color-based and expressionist abstraction for over five decades. During his undergraduate years at Princeton University, he joined fellow students, the painter Frank Stella and the critic and art historian Michael Fried, in conversations that expanded aesthetic definitions and led to an emphasis on opticality as the defining feature of pictorial art.

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