Robert Ryman was one of the main figures of minimalist painting. He taught himself to paint. In 1953, he took up employment as a museum guard at the Museum of Modern Art, like other artists of his generation - Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Dan Flavin, and the art critic Lucy Lippard - all driven by a deep desire to revolutionize art. In the rooms of the MoMA, he immersed himself in the beautiful, radical works of the great modernists: Malevitch, Rothko, Mondrian, and Matisse above all. In a career spanning 60 years, Robert Ryman relentlessly sought out the very essence of painting and the emotion he felt in contact with it. The Collection Lambert in Avignon was founded in 2000 by Yvon Lambert, seeking to open his personal collection of contemporary art to the public, within the walls of the city mansion known as the Hôtel de Caumont. This collection of contemporary art reflects the major movements in the art of our times: Minimal art, Conceptual art, Land art, painting from the 1980's, video and photography from the 1990's.The collection holds works from great artists such as: Cy Twombly, Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, Niele Toroni,Jean-Michel Basquiat, Anselm Kiefer, Christian Boltanski, Nan Goldin,Douglas Gordon and Jenny Holzer.
