John Zurier

(American, born 1956)

John Zurier is a contemporary American painter who employs a range of brushwork and surface techniques to highlight the various textures of the canvas. By applying thin layers of distemper, Zurier creates atmospheric color effects similar to those of Mark Rothko. “I became interested in the color gray and the Japanese concept of ‘killed colors.’ This involves the elimination of color by darkening it or thinning it down so that it hovers almost at the extreme limit of visibility,” he has explained “This is how I came to monochrome—not out of Minimalism and Post-Painterly Abstraction.” Born in 1956 in Santa Monica, CA, he received a BA in landscape architecture from the University of California, Berkeley in 1979. He went on study painting under Joan Brown and Elmer Bischoff, receiving his MFA in 1983. Over the years that followed, the artist has found inspiration in the landscapes of Iceland for his paintings. Zurier currently lives and works in Berkeley, CA. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.