Robert Duran (b. 1938, Salinas, CA; d. 2005, NJ) found his way from San Francisco to New York City in the mid-1960s, where he became associated with a Minimalist cohort that included Brice Marden, David Novros, and Paul Mogensen. Although he took up the visual conventions of Minimalism, Duran’s monumental paintings were defiantly experimental and trend-resistant. His entropic patterns were bold, intuitive, and spontaneous, resembling the mythical diagrams and textile designs of the Far East, where Duran had extensively traveled. As Carter Ratcliff wrote in 1973, Duran’s paintings show “extraordinary power in the deployment of their color-shapes—extraordinary because it is not in the least logical, and yet it finds a coherence with the authority of logic.” Until his first solo show with Karma in 2019, Duran had not exhibited in New York City since 1977. In the time intervening before his death in 2005, Duran continued his rigorous practice. He had presented six solo exhibitions with Klaus Kertess’s Bykert Gallery, and was included in the 1966 Park Place Gallery Invitational, the 1969 Whitney Museum Annual Exhibition, and the Wellspring 1973 Whitney Biennial, among others.
Read MoreHis work can be found in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Empire State Plaza Art Collection, New York; and Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Arkansas.
Text courtesy Karma.
