For over six decades, Robert Irwin (b. 1928, Long Beach, California) has explored perception as the fundamental issue of art. Irwin, who began his career as a painter in the 1950s and became a pioneer of the “Light and Space” movement in the 1960s, has, through a continual breaking down of the frame, come to regard the role of art as “conditional” – working within and responding to the specific surrounding world of experience.
Irwin has had more than seventy-five solo exhibitions at institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1970–71); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1976, 2009–10); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1977, 2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (1997, 2007); the Secession Vienna (2013); and Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1998–99, 2015–17). In 1993 the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, organized a retrospective of his work that traveled to Kölnisher Kunstverein, Cologne; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.
Irwin lives and works in San Diego.
