Donald Baechler was always interested in art, but his dream of becoming an artist crystalized when he was a student at Westtown School, which “had an active art department.” The prolific painter and sculptor recently died at 65, writes Roberta Smith for the New York Times. 

As a young child, he was surrounded by art. After his mother passed, he inherited her collection of fabric scraps. His grandmother was also a painter, and she largely influenced his jump into painting. 

As part of one of the most exciting moments in postwar art in New York, the early 1980s, Baechler’s unique work has been displayed all over the world. Yet, no large staging of his pieces was ever put together by any American museum.

His creative process, which he termed “editing,” consisted of two layers. The base layer was hundreds of cutouts from newspapers, magazines, wallpaper, and stationery while the top layer depicted cartoonish or bold, crudely drawn images. 

“I always used to tell people, ‘I’m an abstract artist before anything else,’ and I still say that occasionally,” Baechler said in 2000. 

Read more about Donald Baechler in the New York Times.