Stephen Mueller (September 24, 1947 in
Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk ( ) is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Incorporated in 1705, it had a population of 238,005 at the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in Virginia after neighboring Virginia Be ...
– September 16, 2011 in
New York City, New York
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
) was an American painter whose
color field and
Lyrical Abstraction
Lyrical abstraction is either of two related but distinct trends in Post-war Modernist painting:
''European Abstraction Lyrique'' born in Paris, the French art critic Jean José Marchand being credited with coining its name in 1947, considered ...
canvases took a turn towards pop. He earned his B.F.A. in painting from the
University of Texas, Austin in 1969 and his M.F.A. at
Bennington College in 1971 where the influence of
Clement Greenberg and the color field school ran high; although he used that style as a stepping off point while incorporating many different spiritual symbols and motifs, so as not to remain entirely abstract.
As stated in
the Brooklyn Rail: "
Islamic art,
Indian miniature painting
Indian painting has a very long tradition and history in Indian art, though because of the climatic conditions very few early examples survive.Blurton, 193 The earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of prehistoric times, such as th ...
,
Mexican ceramics
Ceramics in Mexico date back thousands of years before the Pre-Columbian period, when ceramic arts and pottery crafts developed with the first advanced civilizations and cultures of Mesoamerica. With one exception, pre-Hispanic wares were not gl ...
,
Tantra
Tantra (; sa, तन्त्र, lit=loom, weave, warp) are the esoteric traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism that developed on the Indian subcontinent from the middle of the 1st millennium CE onwards. The term ''tantra'', in the Indian ...
painting, the color theory of
Philipp Otto Runge, the spiritual aura found in
German Romanticism, music,
textile design, and a profound knowledge of
Eastern philosophy
Eastern philosophy or Asian philosophy includes the various philosophies that originated in East and South Asia, including Chinese philosophy, Japanese philosophy, Korean philosophy, and Vietnamese philosophy; which are dominant in East Asia, ...
all contributed to shaping his vision. After abandoning gestural abstraction in the late 1980s, and with it a focus on earth tones, Stephen turned to color wholeheartedly. By the early 1990s, his palette was saturated with bright hues. It is one of the artist’s striking achievements that his work, despite all spectral indulgence, never seems flat."
In 2003 a retrospective of his work was held at the
Joslyn Art Museum in
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...
. Mueller died of lung cancer on September 16, 2011, he was 63.
Mueller's work is held in the collections of the
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
,
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
,
Denver Art Museum and the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...
among other venues.
References
External links
New York Times Obituary2011-09-23
Artist's estate official website2012-07-31
1947 births
2011 deaths
Painters from New York City
20th-century American painters
American male painters
21st-century American painters
People from Manhattan
20th-century American male artists
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