
<p>Since the 1960s, pioneering Conceptual artist Mel Bochner has produced a diverse and compelling body of work focusing on language, geometric forms, and colors. Fjord is an example of the artist’s work with shaped canvases in the 1980s. The painting exhibits an ordered chaos of tactile colors and energetic lines. Bochner started with washes of gray-green then drew in red, blue, and forest green—first as washes, then as rivulets of pigment with paint thinner. The artist has said the beauty found in these works offers “an infinite number of unpredictable combinations. And because of the way geometry and biology are intertwined, the combinations are simultaneously geometric and organic.”</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1984
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 236.2 × 238.8 cm (93 × 94 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Mel Bochner
Artist

Mixed Media
Melvin Simon Bochner was an American conceptual artist. He is considered to be one of the founders of Conceptual Art, and credited with reshaping the canon of contemporary art. Bochner's 1966 exhibition, “Working Drawings And Other Visible Things On Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed As Art,” is cited as one of the first conceptual art exhibitions in the world.
Full artist profile →More
More by Mel Bochner
The Joys of Yiddish
2014 · Screenprint on felt mounted on aluminium
Blah, Blah, Blah
2009 · Color monoprint, with engraving and embossment, in oil paint on hand-stained handmade paper
Blah, Blah, Blah
2009 · Color monoprint, with engraving and embossment, in oil paint on hand-stained handmade paper
Child's Play 1
1996 · Paint on seventy-two wooden blocks
12” Plate
1994 · Aquatint in black on ivory wove paper
Not Ttitled (DSO3)
1994 · Gouache on eight sheets of paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Mel Bochner
- Year
- 1984
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 236.2 × 238.8 cm (93 × 94 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1984-132566
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified





