John Baldessari

John Baldessari (1931–2020) was an American artist who became one of the central figures of Conceptual art. Born in National City, California, he started out as a relatively traditional painter in the 1950s, but by the late 1960s he began replacing brushstrokes with language - using found text from art theory and instruction manuals, hand-lettered by sign painters, as the content of his canvases. In 1970, he famously “ended” his early career by cremating all the paintings he still owned from 1953–1966 in his Cremation Project, a symbolic act that cleared the way for the work that would define him: photo-based pieces combining found imagery, film stills, short phrases, and later his trademark colored dots that mask faces and redirect our gaze.

Alongside his studio practice, Baldessari was a hugely influential teacher, first at UC San Diego and later at CalArts, where his experimental “post-studio” classes shaped generations of artists. Over six decades, he exhibited internationally, received major honors including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale, and saw his works enter the collections of leading museums around the world. Known for his dry wit, visual economy, and relentless curiosity about how pictures and words create meaning, Baldessari helped expand what art could be - turning the simple acts of cropping, labeling, and rearranging into a lifelong investigation of how we see and what we think we’re seeing.