Born November 5, 1949, in New Haven, Connecticut, Carroll Dunham is a leading American painter celebrated for fusing abstraction, figuration, surrealism, and pop-inflected forms. After graduating from Trinity College in 1972, he moved to New York, where early work in Dorothea Rockburne's studio grounded his practice in post-minimalist rigor.
By the 1980s, Dunham shifted toward figuration, blending cartoon-like imagery, biomorphic forms, and bold color. His "Mounds" series of the early 1990s introduced neon, perforated shapes with grotesque humor, while later "Mule" paintings (from 2006) depicted hatted male nudes amid dreamlike landscapes. Recurring motifs-waves, teeth, genitalia, and enigmatic figures-populate his canvases, confronting viewers with playful yet provocative embodiments of the human body.
Dunham's work has been shown internationally, including a retrospective at the New Museum (2002), exhibitions at Millesgarden in Stockholm (2008), and appearances in the Whitney Biennials of 1985, 1991, and 1995. He has held solo shows at Gladstone Gallery, Blum & Poe, Galerie Max Hetzler, and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, among others. His works are in major collections such as the MoMA, Whitney Museum, Tate, Walker Art Center, and Museum Ludwig.
Balancing formal discipline with erotic vibrancy, Dunham's paintings continue to challenge the boundaries between abstraction and narrative, ensuring his place as one of contemporary art's most distinctive and inventive voices.