George Earl Ortman (American, 1926–2015) was an important painter and sculptor, whose work preceded and influenced the Minimalist movement. He is best known for his geometric paintings with collaged and cut surfaces from the 1950–60s, which were shown alongside peers such as Robert Rauschenberg and Louise Nevelson.

Ortman was born in Oakland, CA, and following his service in the Naval Air Corps, he enrolled in the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1947, but left for New York after less than two years. He would then move to Paris in 1949, where he would have his first exhibition at the Salon de Mai of 1950. He was then was invited to join the Artists’ Club in New York, where he returned and met and became friends with members of the Action painting and Color Field movements. Nevertheless, Ortman rejected these developing new trends in art, and began making work that was both simplified and geometric.

By 1963, Ortman was showing regularly, and that year was included in the important survey “Toward a New Abstraction,” held at the Jewish Museum. The Walker Art Center would then go on to host a mid-career retrospective of his work in 1965, and he was subsequently also the subject of solo exhibitions at the Princeton University Museum of Art, the Dallas Art Museum, the Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, and the Portland Museum of Art, among others. He was also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1965, the Ford Foundation Grant in 1966, and the Lee Krasner Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003.

Ortman died on December 16, 2015 in Manhattan at the age of 89.