Since the 1960s, Raymond Saunders (1934 - 2025) developed a singular practice defined by an improvisational approach, as he culled eclectic ephemera, signage, detritus, and other materials from his daily life which reflected his living environment. A cult-like figure in the Bay Area art scene, Saunders’ paintings and installation-based works are loaded with rich swaths of paint, interwoven with found materials and his own notational marks, and white-pencil drawings. Blackboard surfaces, left visible through a heavy accumulation of marks and material, tie Saunders’ works inextricably to his role as an educator, as he handwrited simple equations, lettering, and childlike notes onto the work’s surface. Like Jazz, dissonant at first, Saunders' works cohere upon closer view, employing diverse elements to address the dualities present within life - plight and renewal, lack and abundance, innocence, and despair, as well as the individual and the community. Interweaving his own personal experience and anecdotes, Saunders aimed to teach this full reality of the modern environment, the losses and victories, as well as the splendor that exists within the everyday.

Raymond Saunders was born in Pittsburgh, in 1934, and worked in Oakland, California, until his passing. This year, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, canonized his work with Raymond Saunders: Flowers from a Black Garden, the largest-ever American institutional show and the most comprehensive consideration of his practice to date. In 2024 Andrew Kreps Gallery and David Zwirner presented the double-venue solo show Post No Bills, and in 2022 Saunders work was the subject of a solo exhibition at Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, titled Raymond Saunders: On Freedom and Trust. In 2021, Andrew Kreps Gallery and Casemore Gallery presented the exhibition Raymond Saunders, 40 Years: Paris/Oakland across two locations in San Francisco. Saunders obtained his BFA from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, before moving to California, where he earned his MFA at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Saunders joined the faculty of California State University East Bay, Hayward, in 1968, eventually becoming an arts professor at California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. 

Saunders held the title of professor emeritus from Cal State East Bay in Hayward. In 1967, he published his seminal essay Black is a Color, which challenged the perceptions of identity-focused art. He was awarded a Rome Prize Fellowship in 1964, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976, and is a two-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Awards (1977, 1984). In 2017, his work was included in the traveling exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, 1963 – 1983, organized by London’s Tate Modern. He was also included in the traveling exhibition Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960 – 1980, organized by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. 

Saunders works are included in the permanent collections of ARA Services, Philadelphia, PA; Achenbach Foundation, Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA; William Hayes Ackland Art Center, Chapel Hill, NC; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA; Arizona State University, Matthews Center, Tempe, AZ; Bank of America, San Francisco, CA; California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA; California State College, San Bernardino, CA; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Chemical Bank, New York, NY; Chermayeff & Geismar, New York, NY; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Dayton-Hudson Corporation, Minneapolis, MN; Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; Fisk University, Nashville, TN; Frito Lay corporation, Plano, TX; General Mills, Minneapolis, MN; Hunter College, New York, NY; Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; International Paper Corporation, New York, NY; Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; M.H. de Young and Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Museum of Art and Design, Miami-Dade College, Miami, FL; Mobil Oil; Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA; Park Hyatt Hotel, San Francisco, CA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; RA Services, Burbank, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Security Pacific National Bank; Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE; Southern California Gas Company, Los Angeles, CA; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of Berkeley, Berkely, CA; University of Texas, James A. Michener Collection, Austin, TX; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others.