Untitled, 1968
90 X 70 inches, Acrylic on Canvas

Dan Christensen in 1967 began using spray guns to draw colorful stacks, loops and lines on his paintings, that were among the most original abstract paintings of the decade. Having a unique mastery of the language of abstract painting — color, line, surface, and a confident and gifted touch — Christensen has used his ability to produce a varied and high quality body of work.

By 1968, Christensen made a group of paintings that were colored rectangles and bars floating in a sprayed atmosphere of lyrical, multi-colored space. That year he also began his important series of loop spray paintings. Resembling colored pencil or ball point pen doodles on a note pad, made on a giant scale by a giant hand, these paintings are astonishingly primal and liberating. Painted mostly in thin sweeping lines of sprayed primary color on neutral canvas-colored grounds, these paintings are a remarkable achievement. He followed those paintings with another series of sprayed line paintings that were thick, thin, twisting, serpentine lines and arcs painted on richly colored fields.

Christensen's lucid and articulate ability to paint has led his fertile imagination into several radically different series. He has a willingness to change and grow and he has often altered his painting methods and his style. In the early seventies he made paintings with squeegees that were solid blocks of perpendicular color of different surfaces.

Dan Christensen began exhibiting his paintings in New York City in 1966. He has had more than 60 solo exhibitions and his work has appeared in important group shows all over the world. His paintings are represented in important museums and private collections in the United States and abroad.

Born 1942, Cozad, Nebraska

Resides in New York City