John Baldessari

John Baldessari was born to immigrant parents in California - his mother was Dutch while his father was Italian.

He obtained BA and an MA from San Diego State University and also attended University of California, Otis Art Institute and Chouinard Art Institute.

Following his graduation, he taught art at Southwestern University, California, the University of California at San Diego and the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia.

In the mid-1960s, he worked on photographic images and incorporated texts and photography in his works.

In 1967, he exhibited the ‘Wrong Series’, a collection of photographic images anchored with text, originally compiled for a photography book that broke all the basic rules of composition.

Completed in 1968, his work ‘Painting for Kubler’, which is essentially text on canvas, is a classic example of his typographic art works. The same year he held his first solo exhibition at the Molly Barnes Gallery, Los Angeles.

In July 1970, he destroyed all his paintings that he had created at the art school and called it the ‘The Cremation Project’. The ashes from the burnt paintings were baked into cookies and placed in an urn; one of his art installations.

In the ‘Binary Code Series’, he used images as information holders by alternating photographs in the form of binary codes.

In 1970, he burnt all of his art work created between 1953 and 1966 as part of ‘The Cremation Project’. The ashes from these paintings were kept in a book-shaped bronze urn and a paid death-notice was published in the newspaper.

In 2007, his work ‘Quality Material’, part of his series of word-only artworks, was sold for $4,408,000 at 'Christie's’, the world’s largest art auction house in New York.