Andrew Masullo

A painting of pixelated shapes.
A painting of pixelated shapes.

Andrew Masullo, 5030, 2008–10. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. (61 x 76.2 cm). Collection of the artist. © Andrew Masullo; courtesy Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles


Video: Andrew Masullo

Born in 1957 in Elizabeth, New Jersey
Lives and Works in San Francisco

Andrew Masullo has developed and refined his deceptively simple arrays of shapes and colors since his days as part of the East Village gallery scene in the mid-1980s. Working with unmixed oil paint in high-keyed colors on small canvases, Masullo creates complex conversations among form, color, and surface. His concerns are purely within the process of painting. Beginning without either specific image or preconceived idea, he allows each painting to realize its own conclusion through an often visible series of trial and error. One of the pleasures of these works lies in the constant interplay among compositional elements, as it physically activates and excites the viewer’s eye. Masullo is known as a painter’s painter in part because, despite their ostensible simplicity and modest scale, his works deftly resist being confined by content or artistic movement.