Since the outset of a career spanning seven decades, Richard Tuttle has contributed significantly to the expansion of today’s definitions of drawing, painting, and sculpture, which he often combined in contingent, spatially responsive installations. A central proponent of Postminimalism, Tuttle’s work takes as its core tenets; simple geometries and modest materials, questioning the strict exactitude of Minimalism and valuing instead a humble, handmade quality that frees itself from the limits of traditional media and technique. Through his decades of radical experimentation with materials, his work engages with larger philosophical, cosmic and poetic ideas, which have remained foundational motivators in his practice. As well as colour, scale and line are elements that Tuttle has returned to throughout his oeuvre, which engage directly with the surrounding architecture, subtly sensitising the viewer to the often-unconscious processes, feelings and perceptions inherent in seeing, moving, and thinking from moment to moment. On the subject of his work he remarks, “I am placing in a world that is mostly concerned with recognition, a thing whose primary involvement is perception.” Tuttle’s activities also encompass installation, printmaking, bookmaking, poetry, and design.

Richard Tuttle was born in 1941 in Rahway, New Jersey. He lives and works in New York and Abiquiú, New Mexico. At the age of 23, he joined Betty Parsons Gallery as an assistant. He mounted his first exhibition there the following year, in 1965. His work was soon included in redefining exhibitions, among them When Attitudes Become Form (1969), Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials (1969); and documenta 5 (1972). The controversy surrounding his radical 1975 solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art saw the dismissal of its prescient curator, Marcia Tucker (who went on to found the New Museum, New York). A travelling retrospective, The Art of Richard Tuttle, was organised by SFMOMA in 2005 and mounted at venues including the Whitney, Des Moines Art Center, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary, Los Angeles. In 2014, Tuttle was commissioned to create a new installation for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, which coincided with a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London.