Mark Lesly Smith – författare

Internationally acclaimed for paintings, collages, and prints that draw inspiration from sources as diverse as twentieth-century modernism, the geometry of Cubism and Minimalism, nineteenth-century English botanical illustrations, and the floral and geometic forms of traditional Indian and Egyptian art, Dan Rizzie is an artist with a seemingly endless capacity to absorb visual information and transform it into a unique iconography of the natural world. Since the mid-1970s, he has had some ninety solo exhibitions and has been included in over one hundred group exhibitions. Rizzie’s work is in the permanent collections of leading art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Parrish Art Museum, and the Dallas Museum of Art.Dan Rizzie is the first monograph on this major American artist. It presents a hundred works to showcase an artistic career trajectory that has been both broad-ranging and consistent over four decades. Jane Livingston sets Rizzie’s work in context with an introduction that traces his artistic influences and production from his formative years in Egypt, Jordan, Jamaica, India, and Texas to his mature work created in New York. An extensive interview between Rizzie and editor Terrie Sultan further explores his artistic journey and creative philosophy, while Mark Smith highlights Rizzie’s development and importance as a printmaker. Praising Rizzie’s achievements across painting, collage, and printmaking, as well as the innovative ways in which he often blends these media, Smith proclaims that Rizzie’s art “is ‘decorative’ in the very best way, in that it possesses a timeless beauty. And it is, above all, authentically his own.”