Ruth Pastine Recent Museum Acquisition

Pazo Fine Art is pleased to congratulate Ruth Pastine on the acquisition of Fetish, Primary Red Series, 2011 by The Phillips Collection. This is the first painting by Ruth Pastine to be acquired by the renowned Washington D.C. institution, America’s first museum of modern art. Works by the artist can also be found in the public collections of the de Young Museum Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), CA; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), TX; Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; and Lancaster Museum of Art and History (MOAH), CA among others.

Fetish, Primary Red Series, 2011 was first shown shortly after its creation at Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco, CA. Most recently it was on view at Pazo Fine Art in the exhibition The Technological Sublime. For Pastine, "Color itself, in its infinite beauty, holds the immeasurable field of light and space that it defines."

Born and raised in New York City, Ruth Pastine (b. 1964) is known for her luminous color field paintings and multi-panel installations advancing the seminal Light & Space movement emerging from Southern California in the 1960’s. Pastine continues to evolve pure abstraction and follows the concepts of Minimalist theory, furthering the phenomenological experience of light and space in her work. Ruth Pastine received a four-year scholarship to The Cooper Union for her B.F.A. studying painting, art history, and color theory. Upon graduating she was awarded a post-graduate independent residency grant to the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She received her M.F.A. from Hunter College of the City University of New York where she focused on painting, color theory, and critical studies. In 2009, Pastine was awarded a large site-specific commission titled Limitless, composed of 8 large-scale vertical paintings, installed as two series in the adjoining lobbies of Ernst & Young Plaza, in downtown Los Angeles. In 2014, Ruth Pastine had her first 20-year museum survey exhibition of paintings and works on paper entitled, Attraction: 1993-2013 at MOAH Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA with exhibition catalog essays by Donald Kuspit and Peter Frank with an appreciation by De Wain Valentine. In 2015, she opened Present Tense, exhibiting paintings and works on paper spanning 2010-2015 at the CAM Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA.

Ruth Pastine has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad and is the recipient of numerous awards and grants. Pastine currently lives and works in Southern California.

January 13, 2023