Donald Baechler is an American artist and a key figure in the Neo-Expressionist movement. Living in New York since the 1970s, he worked alongside figures such as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kenny Scharf, incorporating child-like imagery, Pop Art, and the iconography of commerce into his colorful paintings. Baechler was born on November 22, 1956, in Hartford, CT, and grew up in a Quaker family who nourished his early artistic talent. He went on to study at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore from 1974–1977, and continued his education at New York’s Cooper Union. There he befriended Tony Shafrazi, who in 1979 founded a downtown gallery that reflected his interest in work inspired by graffiti art. Baechler’s notable solo exhibitions include a 2012 show at Fisher Landau Center for Art in Long Island City, a 2011 exhibition at the McClain Gallery in Houston, and an exhibition at the Studio d’Arte Raffaelli in Trento, Italy. Baechler lives close to his studio in Lower Manhattan.
