Since the 1960s, Raymond Saunders has developed a singular practice defined by an improvisational approach, as he culls eclectic ephemera, signage, detritus, and other materials from his daily life which reflect his living environment. A cult-like figure in the Bay Area art scene, Saunders’ paintings and installation-based works are loaded with rich swaths of paint, interwoven with found materials and his own notational marks, and white- pencil drawings.
In his assemblage-style paintings, American artist Raymond Saunders (b. 1934, Pittsburgh) merges his extensive formal training with his personal observations and life experiences. Expressionistic brushstrokes, minimalist shapes, line drawings, and vivid colors intertwine with found objects, signs, and doors gathered from his urban surroundings, forming unexpected visual connections and echoes that invite careful, prolonged viewing and offer a rich, layered range of interpretations.
Born in Pittsburgh, Saunders began his art education in the city’s public schools, participating in a program for artistically gifted students. His mentor, Joseph C. Fitzpatrick, the director of art for Pittsburgh’s public schools, also taught other notable artists, including Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, and Mel Bochner. With Fitzpatrick’s guidance and encouragement, Saunders earned a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. While there, he also took courses at the Barnes Foundation through the University of Pennsylvania, before returning to Pittsburgh to complete his BFA at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1960. He later earned an MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in 1961. In 1968, he took a teaching position at California State University, Hayward, eventually joining the faculty of his alma mater (now California College of the Arts), where he holds professor emeritus status. He currently lives and works in Oakland.
In 1967, Saunders achieved wide recognition when he published the pamphlet Black Is a Color as a rebuttal to an article by the writer Ishmael Reed about the Black Arts Movement. In this text, Saunders argues powerfully that Reed fails to capture the vastness of Black expression and in doing so siloes Black artists and their work as delimited by the category of race alone. He concludes with the imperative that we necessarily separate identity from artistic output, that “we get clear of these degrading limitations, and recognize the wider reality of art, where color is the means, not the end.”
Saunders’ first solo exhibitions were held at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in New York in 1966, 1969, 1970, and 1972. In 1971, he had his first major West Coast exhibition and museum presentation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which also traveled to Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York. He exhibited widely in the U.S. and Europe with solo shows at venues including the Providence Museum of Art, Rhode Island (1972); Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (1974, 1990); University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley (1976); Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco (1979; traveling to Baum/Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles); and Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York (1980–1999). Other notable exhibitions included the Seattle Art Museum (1981), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (1984), Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (1987, 1989), Galerie Resche, Paris (1990, 1993), Tampa Museum of Art, Florida (1992), Oakland Museum (1994), and Phoenix Art Museum (1994). He also exhibited at international venues like the Giorgio de Chirico Art Centre in Volos, Greece (1995), and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco (1995), as well as the American Embassy in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (1996). Additionally, Saunders participated in the 1972 Whitney Biennial.
In recent years, Saunders has continued to be featured in solo exhibitions around the world, along with significant group exhibitions. In 2011, his work was included in Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980, curated by Kellie Jones at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, which traveled to MoMA PS1, New York, and the Williams College Museum of Art in Massachusetts. In 2017, he was part of Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate Modern in London, which traveled to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, the Brooklyn Museum, New York, and The Broad in Los Angeles. In 2022, his work was shown in Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
In March 2025, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh will present Raymond Saunders: Flowers from a Black Garden, his first solo museum exhibition since 1996, which will later travel to the Orange County Museum of Art. Saunders’s awards include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1963), a Ford Foundation Award (1964), a Rome Prize Fellowship (1964), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1976), and two National Endowment for the Arts Awards (1977, 1984).
Saunders' work is part of major public collections, including those of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; M.H. de Young and Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Phoenix Art Museum; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Saint Louis Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Seattle Art Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.