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Versions IV

Robert Ryman American
1992
Not on view
Ceaseless investigation underpins Ryman’s approach to painting. Any one work by the artist represents the culmination of "trials" conducted previously. Since the 1960s, Ryman has restricted himself to a limited array of formal and material options. Paradoxically, this is precisely what allows him to experiment as widely as he does, creating endless optical and compositional variations by means of adjustments to primer, medium, scale, material, support, and structure. Versions IV is one of sixteen paintings composed of short delicate brushstrokes that seem to swarm and disperse. The paint is applied to a slender fiberglass panel; at its upper edge the artist attached a fragile sheet of wax paper. Every element conspires to create an impression of weightlessness and extension beyond the painting’s external limits.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Versions IV
  • Artist: Robert Ryman (American, Nashville, Tennessee 1930–2019 New York)
  • Date: 1992
  • Medium: Oil and graphite on acrylic resin sheet with embedded fiberglass (Lumasite) and wax paper
  • Dimensions: 78 x 72 in. (198.1 x 182.9 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Gift of Cynthia Hazen Polsky, 2013
  • Object Number: 2013.517
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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