Daniel Buren  (French, 1938) 

Daniel Buren (French, b.1938) is a painter and installation artist associated with the Conceptual Art movement, and best known for painting stripes in a variety of public locations. Born in Boulogne-Billancourt, he graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Métiers d’Art in 1960. In 1966, after experimenting with an Expressionist style, Buren rejected formal representation and made vertical stripes his exclusive mark. One of Buren’s early installation works, Peinture-Sculpture (1971), was a striped banner that hung in the Guggenheim Museum in New York; it was removed after hanging one day because it obstructed the work of other artists.

A recent installation at the Guggenheim called Around the Corner (2000–2005) features a tower of mirrored glass that spans the length of the museum. This structure is derived from Buren’s series of cabanes éclatées (smaller cabins that are separated into parts and integrated into their surroundings). For his most controversial work, Deux Plateaux (1986), Buren covered one of the courtyards of the Palais-Royal in Paris with columns covered in his signature vertical stripes. In 1986, Buren represented France at the Venice Biennale and won the Golden Lion Award. He has held solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art, among others institutions. His work is held in several museum collections, including the Museo Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Tate Modern in London.