Daniel buren biography

Born in Boulogne-Billancourt (Paris) in 1938, Daniel Buren lives and works in situ.

In the mid 60’s, Buren began to create paintings that radically questioned and explored the economy of the media used in his work and the relationship between background (support medium) and form (painting).

In 1965, when he was painting pictures that combined rounded forms and stripes varying in sizes and colours, he chose to use an industrial fabric with fixed vertical 8.7 cm-wide stripes alternating white with another colour.

Beginning from this extremely simple and banal visual register, Buren further impoverished it by repeating it systematically to reach the grade of zero painting. This reflection will cause the observer’s attention to shift from the work to the physical and social environment within which the artist intervenes.

Eventually, he abandoned his studio in 1967, to favour work in situ, starting from the street, then the gallery, the museum, the landscape or the architecture