Raymond Saunders (artist)

Raymond Saunders
Born	1934 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, America
Nationality	American
Education	California College of Arts and Crafts
Known for	Painting
Awards	Rome Prize 1964, Guggenheim Fellowship 1976

Raymond Saunders (born 1934Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,USA) is an American artist known for his multimedia paintings which often have sociopolitical undertones, and which incorporate assemblage, drawing, collage and found text. Saunders is also recognized for his installation, sculpture, and curatorial work.

Raymond Saunders received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1960. He trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Barnes Foundation before going on to earn his Master of Fine Arts degree from California College of Arts and Crafts in 1961.

Saunders lives and works primarily in Oakland, California. Saunders is a former professor of Painting at California College of the Arts, Oakland, California.

Saunders works in a large variety of media, but is mainly known for work that encompasses painting and transversal media juxtaposition, sometimes bordering on the sculptural (as in Pieces of Visual Thinking, 1987) but always retaining the relation to the flat wall key to modernism in painting. Saunders' painting is expressive, and often incorporates collage (mostly small bits of printed paper found in everyday life), chalked words (sometimes crossed out), and other elements that add references and texture without breaking the strong abstract compositional structure. This lends a sense of social narrative to even his abstract work which sets it apart from artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, or Cy Twombly, with which it has obvious affinities.

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