LewAllen Galleries presents Dan Christensen: 20 year survey (1969–1989), an eye-popping retrospective of one of America’s most influential abstract painters, spanning two decades of extraordinary innovation, experimentation, and expression that features many works set aside by his estate of monumental scale never before exhibited Curated from Christensen’s groundbreaking work between 1969 and 1989, this exhibition showcases the artist’s relentless pursuit of new techniques and his transformative impact on postwar American art.

Dan Christensen (1942–2007) emerged in the 1960s New York art scene and quickly made his mark with a succession of stylistically diverse bodies of work—from the geometric Plaids to the flowing, atmospheric Sprays and the earthy, tool- driven Scrapes. Known as a “painter’s painter,” Christensen earned early praise from influential critics like Clement Greenberg, who called him “one of the painters on whom the course of American art depends.” His early spray gun paintings, with their ribbons of color and improvisational forms, became synonymous with the Lyrical Abstraction movement and earned him acquisitions by major institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Guggenheim.

The exhibition traces Christensen’s journey through multiple stylistic evolutions—each marked by a mastery of color and material—from the gestural Calligraphic stains and Scrapes to his late Spray paintings. These works exemplify Christensen’s ethos: a commitment to discovery, a dialogue with art history, and a belief in the transformative act of painting itself. Dan Christensen: 20 year survey (1969–1989) is a celebration of Christensen’s protean creativity and his fearless reinvention, where he synthesized influences from Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Color Field Painting into a visual language all his own.

The exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to explore the rich arc of a visionary artist’s career—one that helped shape the course of late 20th-century American painting. The works featured showcase Christensen’s ever- evolving journey through groundbreaking series that redefined Post-Painterly Abstraction and secured his legacy as one of America’s foremost colorists. Christensen’s paintings are held in major museum collections including the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and MoMA. As the distinguished author and art writer John Seed has noted about Christensen “[He] transformed the American art scene of his time and remains influential today.”