Carroll Dunham: Line That Never Ends: Drawings 1984-2004

by Klaus Kertess, Carroll Dunham

Exploration and radical change have distinguished New York painter Carroll Dunham's drawings and works on canvas since the beginning of his career. Drawings 1984-2004 documents 20 years of controlled yet delirious lines wrapping around biomorphic landscapes and curling into eruptive blobs and gobs, vividly colored planets and eyeless demons in taut interiors. Klaus Kertess's essay rightly places Dunham among "the explorers of line, Pollock, de Kooning, Twombly and Marden." Limited edition of 150 copies.

61 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2006

About the author

Klaus Kertess was an American art gallerist, art critic and curator (including of the 1995 Whitney Biennial). He grew up in Westchester County north of New York City, the second of three children. After graduating from Phillips Academy, he studied art history at Yale University and in 1966 founded the Bykert Gallery with his college roommate Jeff Byers. The gallery name was formed from a compound of both of theirs. At Bykert he showed a roster of artists which included; Brice Marden, David Novros, Barry Le Va, Alan Saret, Chuck Close, Bill Bollinger, Dorothea Rockburne, and many others.
Later as an independent curator he oversaw the 1995 edition of the Whitney Biennial. Then in 1998 he curated the exhibition DeKooning: Drawing/Seeing at the Drawing Center also in New York City.
Kertess suffered from Alzheimer's and died on October 8, 2016, after collapsing at his apartment. He was 76. He is survived by his longtime partner, the painter Billy Sullivan.