Katherine Bernhardt’s (b. 1975) boundless visual appetite has established her as one of the most energetic painters working today. Her trust in the fundamental underpinnings of painting gives her the freedom to depict anything she wants, and the democratizing surfaces of her canvases work without illusion, perspective, logical scale shifts, or atmosphere. With Bernhardt’s blunt yet lyrical approach, each painting has the feel of a complete thought that engages rich and raucous free association.
Biography
Katherine Bernhardt’s (b. 1975) boundless visual appetite has established her as one of the most energetic painters working today. Her trust in the fundamental underpinnings of painting gives her the freedom to depict anything she wants, and the democratizing surfaces of her canvases work without illusion, perspective, logical scale shifts, or atmosphere. With Bernhardt’s blunt yet lyrical approach, each painting has the feel of a complete thought that engages rich and raucous free association.
Bernhardt was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2000.
Her work has also been included in significant group exhibitions, such asWe Fight to Build a Free World: An Exhibition by Jonathan Horowitz, Jewish Museum, New York (2020);Animal Farm, an exhibition curated by Sadie Laska at The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut (2017);NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, Rubell Museum, Miami (2015; traveled to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, through 2017); andBad Touch, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago (2002).
Work by the artist is found in prominent public and museum collections worldwide, including The Brant Foundation, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Rubell Museum, Miami; and the San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas. Bernhardt lives and works in St. Louis.
