Donald Baechler born in Hartford Connecticut, is an important member of the East Village art scene of 1980s New York, and often linked with the Neo-Expressionist and Pop Art generation of painters such as Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat, and Kenny Scharf. The artist’s works are identifiable for the use of his clichéd yet signature motifs like skull, rose, globe and soccer ball which convey what he calls an “illusion of history”, a feeling of memory without becoming an illustration. Culled from a huge archive of images the artist has collected, his prints, paintings, and sculpture focus more on formal attributes than narrative. “I'm drawn to silhouettes because of their emblematic rather than their illustrational quality,” he reflected. “I see them as shapes, allowing an image to become an abstraction and for pure painting to take place.”
Baechler studied at Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, Cooper Union in New York, and the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main. His works have been represented in the collections of many prestigious institutes including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Philadelphia Museum; and The Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris.