Raymond Saunders, A ‘Major Voice in American Painting,’ Joins David Zwirner

Raymond Saunders, a painter whose work was seen a new level of attention in US museums in the past decade, has joined the roster of David Zwirner, one of the world’s biggest galleries.

But, whereas the jump to a mega-gallery typically results in a departure from a smaller enterprise, Saunders will also continue to retain his representation with New York’s Andrew Kreps Gallery.

To toast the new deal, David Zwirner and Andrew Kreps will both mount Saunders shows this month. David Zwirner’s two-venue exhibition will be organized by Ebony L. Haynes, who runs the gallery’s 52 Walker space.

“Andrew reached out to me late last year to introduce me to the work of Raymond Saunders, and I was mesmerized immediately,” dealer David Zwirner said in a statement. “Seeing the work in Andrew’s gallery I felt I was in the presence of a major American voice in painting, who has not received his proper due.”

Similar co-representation deals are being inked with increasing frequency by mega-galleries like David Zwirner. Hauser & Wirth, for example, recently launched a “collective impact” initiative that brings on new artists while also honoring their current galleries as well. Thus far, Uman and Ambera Wellman have joined Hauser & Wirth through the initiative, keeping their ties to galleries like Nicola Vassell and Company in the process.

Saunders joined David Zwirner as he prepares for a traveling survey that is being organized by the Orange County Museum of Art.

Many of Saunders’s paintings look more like assemblages, with found materials affixed to backgrounds that are scrawled with lines, patterns, and symbols. By turns cryptic and alluring, the works draw out connections between the assorted materials in a way that recalls Robert Rauschenberg’s combines.

During the ’60s and ’70s, Saunders achieved acclaim, showing with the well-regarded Terry Dintenfass Gallery in New York. Moreover, he received attention outside the art world for his pamphlet Black Is a Color, which contested Ishmael Reed’s ideas about the Black Arts Movement, claiming that he had not defined Blackness expansively enough. Saunders, who is based in Oakland, California, even had a San Francisco Museum of Modern Art show in 1971.

Yet Saunders does not have the same level of fame as other artists of the era, although inclusions in recent group shows have helped to raise his profile. He has appeared in crucial surveys of Black artists in California and the Black Power movement’s influence on art-making, as well as in a show about Just Above Midtown gallery that was organized in 2022 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Dealer Andrew Kreps, whose 2022 Saunders exhibition was the artist’s first in New York in over 20 years, said in a statement, “There’s no question that Raymond has yet to have his proper due, and I believe these concurrent exhibitions, one of the most expansive presentations of his work to date, will make it clear how profound and rich his practice is. I can’t think of another artist who is able to so effortlessly pull together such a wide range of mark-making and materiality, with each work becoming its own world.”