User:CJCoburn/sandbox

Ralph Coburn.

Ralph Coburn (Born August 10,1923) is an American artist and graphic designer mainly associated with the fields of minimalism, hard edge painting and participatory, open system works of art.

Education:

Coburn studied architecture at MIT "where he was enrolled from 1941-1943 before being called for military service and working as a draftsman for the Miami Air Depot."1 "After World War ll, he returned to the study of architecture, but collaborations with students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston caused him to change course....In 1945 he withdrew from the architecture program at MIT and studied painting with Carl Gustaf Nelson while working as assistant director of the Boris Mirski Gallery in Boston in the later 1940's. Nelson was friends with the composer John Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham and knowledge of their advance methods encouraged Coburn to reconceive painting in experimental, participatory terms over the course of the next decade."2

Career:

"Coburn's friend Ellsworth Kelly had completed his degree at the Museum School in 1948 and left for France that autumn. Kelly wrote to Coburn in the spring of 1949 to encourage him to come to Paris, even suggesting that the two might begin a journal entitled Concrete."3 Coburn spent the next six years working at the Mirski Gallery in Boston where he would save enough money to return to France to live for six to twelve months and concentrate on his art. By the fall of 1956 Coburn returned to Boston for good and in 1957 was offered a positon as a graphic designer at the newly formed Office of Publications at MIT. As there was no market for his minimal, experimental works of art in Boston, Coburn accepted the MIT offer. Coburn would go on to receive national and international recognition for his graphic design work at MIT while continuing to pursue his ideas and artwork.

References:

1.

Kirsten Swenson, Ralph Coburn: Random Sequence, (The Arts Club of Chicago, 2017). 6

2.

Kirsten Swenson, Ralph Coburn: Random Sequence, (The Arts Club of Chicago, 2017). 6,7.

3.

Rachael Arauz, Ralph Coburn: France, Essay of exhibition catalog, (David Hall Fine Art, Wellesley MA, 2011). 3.

4.

Yve-Alain Bos, Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings, 1948-1955 (Cambridge, Harvard University Art Museum, 1999). 18.