The Meaningful Experience 1983-85 40x33
Welcome to the official site of the Philadelphia born, New York School, action painter, Raymond Hendler (1923-1998).
This site is dedicated to the extraordinary life and work of an original thinker and pioneer of modern art. A rising star in his time; his reputation has suffered from an extended period underground, coupled with changing fashions and shifting priorities of a fickle art world and its marketplace aesthetic. For the last four decades, his unique contribution to art history has gone largely unrecognized.
"Since first I saw Hendler's paintings in 1952 they have developed into a larger simpler form arriving at a personally abstract image controlled within a painted space. The direct austere design and color complexes paint the image without undue nuances-with clarity and mature independence."
Franz Kline, 1961
"Raymond Hendler exhibited a group of abstract paintings that displayed rare high spirits. Using a great deal of fresh white, Hendler devised extremely simple symbols which he dispersed felicitously on his shining grounds. These bright, often linear hieroglyphs serve both as pictorial animators-they often flow in winding patterns or like fluent handwriting-and as references to the plentitude of the artist's existence. Gardens and sky and human joy are read in these exceedingly compressed forms."
Dore Ashton, 1964
We invite you to learn more about the artist; through an essay, a selected retrospective and his extensive resume. The Estate's mission is to bring to the public, further awareness of and education about this important 20th century American painter.
