Clark Richert (1941-2021)

Painter, muralist, sculptor, video-animation artist, and teacher based in Colorado.

Clark Richert was one of the original founders of Drop City, the iconic artist commune, established in 1965, outside of Trinidad, Colorado. An early proponent of technology, his collaborative work with the Drop City communards was included in the monumental 1968 Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

After Drop City, he and a group of fellow Droppers co-founded the Criss Cross Art Cooperative and published the critically acclaimed art journal Criss Cross Art Communications, important conceptual threads of the Pattern and Decoration movement. Grappling with “big ideas,” such as the nature of space, the meaning of time, and the hidden unity in likenesses, his art anticipated a number of mathematical and science breakthroughs, such as non-periodic tiling, buckyballs, and quasi-crystals; and inspired the creation of the Zometool toy.

Known primarily for his large, geometrically-patterned paintings, Clark Richert continued to evolve throughout his career in style as well as in media — from complex pattern paintings to pictorial landscapes and figural work; and from canvases to wall and pavement murals to kinetic works, such as spin paintings, computer animations and the animated sculpture, Quadrivium which was completed in 2019.