Biographical note

Born September 12, 1928 in Long Beach, California, artist Robert Irwin is a leader among the generation of West Coast artists that defined the Light and Space movement. Irwin studied at the Otis Art Institute and the Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles and began his career as a painter, associating with the vibrant Ferus Gallery scene of the late 1950s and 1960s. Irwin's ongoing considerations of the nature of light and space led him to create complex environmental paintings and, in turn, non-object based environments and installations. The transformative pieces he produced in the 1960s and 1970s helped shape the aesthetics and conceptual foundations of the Light and Space movement, which continues to inform the complex works he produces. Irwin strategically places his artwork in its interior or exterior environment, confronting the viewer with the conditions and qualities of the surroundings as well as the work, thereby orchestrating the viewer's awareness and experience. His work is therefore characterized with unique perceptual qualities that are produced as a viewer interacts with and responds to his art as a physical, sensory, and temporal experience. In addition to his painting, installations, and landscape design, Robert Irwin has contributed to the arts through extensive theoretical writing.