Over the past four decades, critically acclaimed, Los Angeles-based artist Henry Taylor has created a vast body of highly personal work that combines figurative, landscape and history painting, alongside drawing, installation and sculpture. For his first exhibition at Hauser & Wirth New York, Taylor moves into a new technical realm, debuting a series of limited-edition etchings and hand-painted monoprints, all produced in collaboration with Paulson Fontaine Press in Berkeley CA. Spanning from the humorous to the contemplative, this intimate collection of new works both distills and expands Taylor’s practice. It also serves as a record of the artist’s time spent in Berkeley, just a short distance from Laney College in Oakland, where he took his first etching class in the late 1970s.

Known for saturated color passages, gestural mark making and a rapid style of execution, Taylor’s work emerges from his relentless cataloging of imagery, experiences and imaginings. The artist’s printmaking is likewise a rich amalgam of life and invention, guided by a deep empathy for his subjects and extensive repertoire of influences. The works on view here include still lifes, portraits, fictive landscapes and scenes of family and friends. Many of these printed works draw inspiration from earlier paintings, incorporating recurring imagery and themes while revisiting former compositions. For example, with the print It wasn’t just Sunday, it was Easter Sunday and I had to wear a dress! (2024), Taylor returns to a 2011 painting he based off a photograph of his late mother and his daughter when she was a young child. Experimenting with color variations, he adopts the palette of French painter and printmaker Édouard Vuillard. In other iterations of the print, Taylor isolates and modifies specific elements, shaping the overall emotional quality and texture of each piece. Several intimate black-and-white etchings, including one of his late friend and fellow artist Pope.

Printmaking introduces a new collaborative dimension to Taylor’s practice, which he likens to the relationship between a musician and producer. It also brings a different tempo and physicality to his aesthetic pursuits. In these prints, Taylor’s skill as a colorist is particularly evident; for instance, the same piercing self-portrait—present across three different works—shifts in meaning and nuance via the visceral impact of each version’s unique combination of color and line. In Fade to black, I did not pay the electric bill (2024), Taylor ultimately blocks out most of the color, a technique he often employs in his paintings. By completely obscuring an entire scene or text, Taylor ensures that only he knows what remains hidden underneath. Similarly, in a private tribute on the back of a still life inspired by Beckmann and Manet, the artist lists names—of loved ones, of the printers at Paulson Fontaine and of familiars who have recently died—further highlighting the medium’s expressive potential.

Henry Taylor lives and works in Los Angeles CA. In 2022, a major survey exhibition dedicated to the artist, Henry Taylor: B Side, his largest to date, was exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA and was then on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY until 28 January 2024. Taylor’s work will be featured in group exhibitions this fall including ‘Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1976– Now’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY, ‘The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure’ at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia PA, and ‘World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project’ at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles CA. Taylor’s work is in prominent public collections including the Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris, France, Broad Museum, Los Angeles CA, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh PA, The Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA, Museum of Fine Art, Houston TX, Museum of Modern Art, New York NY, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York NY, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY. In 2018, Taylor was the recipient of The Robert De Niro, Sr. Prize in 2018 for his outstanding achievements in painting. Taylor’s work was presented at the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY in 2017 and the 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy in 2019.