Overview

• Galleries Casemore, Andrew Kreps and David Zwirner confirmed Saunders died of pneumonia in Oakland on July 19 at age 90.
• His inaugural museum retrospective, “Flowers from a Black Garden” at the Carnegie Museum of Art, concluded days before his death and was the first institutional survey of his work since 1996.
• Over six decades, Saunders pioneered mixed‐media assemblages fusing found objects with vivid color fields and gestural marks to defy artistic categorizations.
• In his 1967 pamphlet Black Is a Color, he rejected expectations that Black artists address racial themes and championed broader creative autonomy.
• Saunders taught painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts from 1987 until 2013, influencing generations of artists and earning a place in major museum collections.