Born in Salinas, California, to a Filipino father and Shawnee mother, Robert Duran (1938–2005) arrived in New York in the early 1960s via San Francisco, where he soon became part of the artistic milieu associated with Bykert Gallery. Originally a sculptor, Duran and his approach to painting offer an alternative to both the hard-edge geometric abstraction and minimalism that dominated much of the ‘60s and ‘70s in New York. Duran’s acrylic wash surfaces and “color shapes,” as critic Carter Ratcliff called them, at times resemble petroglyphs, and at others take on cartographic or even geological qualities.

Despite a critically successful career in the New York art world, Duran moved around 1980 with his family to Hillsdale, New Jersey, where he privately continued to develop his painting style. Through the works in this exhibition, visitors will be able to trace the arc of Duran’s evolutions and experiments in painting, drawing, and watercolor from roughly 1967 to the late 1990s. Much of what we know about Duran is limited to exhibition history and anecdotes from friends, family, and acquaintances who can only begin to flesh out certain contours of the artist’s life, often leaving more questions than answers. This exhibition seeks to reintroduce this artist to the public primarily through the most significant record of his life available to us: his paintings and works on paper.