IN MEMORIAM: RAYMOND SAUNDERS (1934 - 2025)

Andrew Kreps Gallery is deeply saddened to share the passing of Raymond Saunders (1934–2025) at the age of 90. Saunders’s singular oeuvre was defined by assemblage-style works that brought together his extensive formal training with his own lived experiences.

"It’s been a highlight of my career to work with Raymond to exhibit and promote his work, which is undeniably important. Our conversations had a profound impact on how I look at art, education, and our relationships to one another."  - Andrew Kreps

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1934, Raymond Saunders first studied in the city’s public school art programs under Joseph C. Fitzpatrick. The artist spent most of his career in Oakland, California, where he taught for many years and was Professor Emeritus at California College of the Arts. Saunders was jointly represented by Andrew Kreps Gallery, Casemore Gallery, and David Zwirner.

Saunders’s career was recently canonized in his largest-ever American institutional show in his hometown at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Flowers from a Black Garden, of which Will Heinrich wrote in his New York Times review, “Mere expanses of black paint, in his treatment, become imaginative universes and art-historical chalkboards, capable of summoning up and subsuming just about anything he can think of.”

We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, and extensive community of artists and students on whom he left an indelible mark.