Richard Ernst Artschwager was born on December 26, 1923, in Washington, D.C., to European immigrant parents: his father, a Prussian-born botanist, and his mother, a Ukrainian-born amateur artist and designer. Their heritage and early encouragement fostered young Richard's love for art. In 1935, the family relocated to Las Cruces, New Mexico, due to his father's health needs.
After enrolling at Cornell University in 1941 to study chemistry and mathematics, Artschwager served in World War II, seeing action in Europe before returning to complete his BA in physics in 1948. Encouraged by his wife, he pursued his passion for art, studying in Paris under Purist painter Amédée Ozenfant in 1949.
Post-war, Artschwager worked as a baby photographer and furniture maker in New York. In 1960, a commission to build portable altars for ships propelled him into using Formica and wood-materials that informed his later sculptural and painterly vocabulary. After a fire destroyed his studio in the late 1950s, he shifted toward art, creating small wall-based objects blending painting and carpentry.
In 1962, Artschwager discovered Celotex, a textured fiberboard often used for ceiling insulation. Its textured surface enriched his work, starting with breakthrough pieces like Handle and his wall-hung "Portrait I," combining sculptural form and painting. He continued to challenge perception-creating sculptural works that resembled furniture yet transcended functional expectation, such as Table with Pink Tablecloth (1964), a Formica-on-wood object that he described as "not sculptural… more like a painting pushed into three dimensions.
Later, he developed his signature "blps"-small, lozenge-shaped forms that appeared on gallery walls, street corners, and within institutional spaces. These playful punctuations disrupted spatial norms and expanded the viewer's engagement with context.
Through the decades, Artschwager experimented with the tension between image and object, function and fantasy. He created "useless objects"-mirrors that don't reflect, books without pages, non-functional drawers-mocking consumerism and conventional utility with gentle satire. His late 1960s works, such as paintings of the Traymore Hotel demolition, mirrored societal change and decay through blurred halftone aesthetics on Celotex surfaces.
In his later decades, Artschwager embraced larger sculptural work, including pianos and oversized furniture forms that referenced artists like Malevich and Matisse. His 2012 Rome show featured five monumental piano sculptures rendered in Formica, echoing early themes while celebrating material and formal innovation.
Artschwager's career was punctuated by influential solo and survey exhibitions. His first mature solo exhibition occurred at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1965. Major retrospectives followed: at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (1979-80), the Whitney Museum (1988-89), and a sweeping traveling retrospective "Richard Artschwager!" created by the Whitney Museum (2012-14) that toured to the Hammer Museum, Haus der Kunst, and others. In 2020, the Guggenheim Bilbao hosted a major survey of his career-solidifying his place in contemporary art history.
Artschwager also participated in major group exhibitions, including documenta multiple times, and influenced postmodern and neo-geo movements through his distinctive hybrid approach.
His work is held in prominent institutions worldwide-including MoMA, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Ludwig, Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, Fondation Cartier Paris, and many more. His craft, combining domestic materials and conceptual play, inspired younger artists like Haim Steinbach and forged a path within Pop, Minimal, and Conceptual art practices.
Richard Artschwager (1923-2013) remains a maverick of American art-blending science, craft, satire, and spatial provocation into a vivid, singular practice. Whether through a faux furniture piece, a textured Celotex painting, or a wandering blp, he continually transformed everyday materials and forms into perceptual puzzles that charm, critique, and endure.