Ronnie Landfield

Since 1969, Ronnie Landfield has had more than seventy solo exhibitions of his paintings, including twenty-eight in New York City. In 2007–2008, he had a retrospective exhibition exploring five decades of his paintings at the Butler Institute of American Art. His paintings have been included in group exhibitions worldwide, in such places as Beijing, Manila, Havana, Paris, Cologne, Munich, Sapporo, and Gubbio and Udine, Italy. His work has been seen in three Whitney Museum Biennials and hundreds of group shows, including those at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, the André Emmerich Gallery, and the Leo Castelli Gallery.

His paintings are represented in public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the National Gallery, the Seattle Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Bavarian State Museum in Munich, the Federal Reserve Board, the U.S. State Department, Charles Schwab, Mobil, GE, ARCO, Prudential Insurance, Chase Manhattan, New York University, and Stanford University.

Mr. Landfield explains his beginnings: “Perhaps it all changed for me when I was 15 one Sunday morning in early August in 1962. I was sitting by the pool where I was the lifeguard, and the word spread that Marilyn Monroe had died the night before. I packed my art supplies and my bathing suit, quit my job in the hotel in Woodridge, New York, and enrolled at the Art Students League in Woodstock, New York. By sundown Monday, I was studying with Arnold Blanch and working nights at the Café Espresso on Tinker Street. That summer, I met Allan Kaprow, Eva Hesse, Gahan Wilson, Herman Cherry, and many other exciting young artists.’’

In 1969, he was awarded a William and Norma Copley Foundation (Cassandra) Grant for Painting. In 1995 and 2001, he was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant for Painting. Mr. Landfield taught fine arts at the School of Visual Arts from 1975 to 1989, and was a guest instructor at Bennington College in 1968. He has taught at the Art Students League of New York since 1994.