Robert Ryman was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1930. Prior to becoming an artist, the majority of Ryman’s arts education was in music. He studied saxophone between 1948 and 1950 before being assigned to an army reserve band during the Korean War. Ryman moved to New York in 1952 to pursue a career as a jazz musician. A day job he took as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art brought him into contact with works by multiple abstract expressionist painters, sparking his own interest in art. He began painting on his own in 1953. By the end of the decade, he had started making his square white-on-white works using any number of different materials, a format and palette he pursued until his death in 2019 at the age of 88.

Ryman’s works have been exhibited in galleries, museums, and exhibitions including the Whitney Biennial, documenta 5, and the Venice Biennale and the subject of multiple retrospectives. His works can be found in museum collections throughout the world including the Art Institute of Chicago, Dia Art Foundation, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, and the Tate.