Ronnie Landfield b. 1947

Ronnie Landfield (b. 1947) is an American abstract painter whose work has been closely associated with Lyrical Abstraction, Color Field painting, and the legacy of Abstract Expressionism. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Landfield began studying art as a teenager at the Art Students League in Woodstock, where he encountered a vibrant community of artists and musicians. He went on to study at the Art Students League of New York and became part of the generation of painters who, during the 1960s and 1970s, expanded the possibilities of abstraction through an emphasis on gesture, color, and open pictorial space. His early work brought together spontaneous mark-making and expansive fields of color, establishing the foundations of a practice that would remain engaged with both abstraction and the landscape.

Throughout his career, Landfield has developed a distinctive form of abstract landscape painting in which color, light, and spatial relationships evoke the experience of the natural world without directly depicting it. His compositions often balance fluid gestures with broad, luminous passages of color, allowing forms to appear and dissolve within the picture plane. From the late 1960s onward, his work was exhibited extensively in New York and internationally, and he was represented by the David Whitney Gallery and André Emmerich Gallery. Landfield has also maintained a significant teaching practice, including positions at the School of Visual Arts, Bennington College, and the Art Students League of New York.

Landfield has presented his work in more than seventy solo exhibitions and hundreds of group exhibitions, including exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. His work has been included in three Whitney Museum Biennials and a 2007–2008 retrospective at the Butler Institute of American Art examining five decades of his career. His paintings are held in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center, National Gallery, and Norton Simon Museum. Landfield has received grants from the William and Norma Copley Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in recognition of his contributions to American painting.