richard tuttle

Tuttle studied at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and after moving to New York in 1963 he spent a semester at the Cooper Union and worked at the Betty Parsons Gallery. One year after taking a job as an assistant at Betty Parsons, she gave him his first show.

Tuttle's reputation as a master was secure in Europe from early on, though acceptance of his work in his home country was slower. Tuttle had a survey exhibition in 1975 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibit was controversial and the show's curator, Marcia Tucker, lost her job as a result. (Tuttle's work, however, is in the collection of the Whitney today.) Hilton Kramer, then art critic for The New York Times wrote, referring to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's dictum "less is more", "in Mr. Tuttle's work, less is unmistakably less...One is tempted to say, so far as art is concerned, less has never been as less than this."

Tuttle is often referred to as an "artist's artist" and as such his work has been influential to a generation of contemporary artists such as Kiki Smith, Jim Hodges (artist), David Hammons, Michael Oman-Reagan, Tom Friedman and Jessica Stockholder. He was very close friends with minimalist painter Agnes Martin until her death in 2004.

In 2005, Tuttle had a major retrospective spanning his 40 year career at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The exhibit traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in November, 2005. He is represented by Sperone Westwater in New York City and by Galerie Schmela in Dusseldorf and by Annemarie Verna Galerie in Zurich . He lives and works in New York City and New Mexico. He is married to the poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge.

He has been the recipient of many awards for his work including the 74th American Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago Biennial Prize, the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, New York, and the Aachen Art Prize, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Germany.