Katherine Bernhardt 캐서린 베른하르트 (born 1975 in Clayton, Missouri) is an US-american artist. She currently lives and works in St. Louis in her midtown studio which was a former auto shop.
Over the past decade, Katherine Bernhardt has focused on painting all kinds of pop culture icons (e.g. Darth Vader, R2D2, Garfield, the Smurfs, E.T., the Pink Panther, etc.) as well as objects from more everyday pop culture (such as cigarettes, toilet paper, NYC metro passes, plantains, sharks, watermelons, tennis shoes, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Scotch Tape, ice cream, pizza, etc.).
Katherine Bernhardt had a memorable exhibition curated by Roya Sachs at Lever House, New York in 2017, where she presented a series of soft sculptures alongside her paintings and a wild and colorful installation with plants.
In November 2019, Katherine Bernhardt was nominated for the New York Artwalk, a citywide charity event for the homeless.
Katherine Bernhardt has also been involved in numerous collaborations in the art and fashion industry, such as W Magazine, Chanel, and Miss Sixty.
Katherine Bernhardt’s paintings can fetch up to $230,000. Around $80,000 US was reached for PLANTAINS, BANANAS & TOILET PAPER (2015) at Sotheby’s in 2018, and was slightly more than double the estimate. 캐서린 베른하르트 also had a show in Seoul.
In July 2021, David Zwirner announced Katherine Bernhardt will now represented by him worldwide.
Katherine Bernhardt’s boundless visual appetite has established her as one of the most energetic painters working today. She first gained attention in the early 2000s for her paintings of supermodels, taken directly from the pages of fashion magazines such as Elle and Vogue. In the decade that followed, she began painting sample paintings featuring an ever-growing list of everyday subjects. Tacos, coffee makers, toilet paper, cigarettes, E.T., Garfield, Darth Vader and the Pink Panther form unlikely visual combinations in expansive fields of exuberant color. She delights in variety and fully explores each of her obsessions before moving on to another. Bernhardt’s confidence in the fundamental underpinnings of painting gives her the freedom to depict whatever she wants, and the democratizing surfaces of her canvases function without illusion, perspective, logical shifts in scale, or atmosphere. With Bernhardt’s blunt yet lyrical approach, each painting has the feel of a complete thought, incorporating the artist’s rich and raw free association.
“I think the best painters don’t intellectualize their own art—they just make stuff.”
Through her index of images, from childhood sticker books to a ketchup bottle seen while traveling, Bernhardt chronicles her life and the broader culture, synthesizing her visual material with hard-won ease. Her influences range from Henri Matisse and the “Pattern and Decoration” movement to Peter Doig and Chris Ofili. She is an artist’s artist admired by many contemporary colleagues working today as a unique voice in painting. In a palette that ranges from restrained to vibrant day-glo, Bernhardt paints canvases face up on her studio floor, using spray paint, puddles of thinned acrylic and utilitarian brushwork to emphasize aspects of her subjects. Bernhardt’s process is improvisational and loose, sometimes inviting chance into the work and asserting an equal relationship between artist and material.
Bernhardt’s star is also on the rise in the secondary market. In June 2021, Phillips Auction House set an auction record when it sold an untitled 2016 painting by Bernhardt during its Contemporary Art Day Sale. With an estimated sale price between $40,000 and $60,000, the work’s $233,100 surpassed the previous record of $138,000 set earlier in 2021.
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
Katherine Bernhardt: Sidewalk Chalk, Zwirner Los Angeles, April 11—May 23, 2025, David Zwirner Los Angeles, USA
2025 Katherine Bernhardt Solo Exhibition, Seoul Arts Center, Hangaram Art Museum, June 5th – September 28th, 2025
2025 Katherine Bernhardt x Jeremy Scott
Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (NMOCA), Kansas, USA.
February 7, 2025 – August 3, 2025
2023 “Dummy doll jealous eyes ditto pikachu beefy mimikyu rough play Galarian rapid dash libra horn HP 270 Vmax full art”, David Zwirner Hong Kong
2023 “I’m Bart Simpson, who the hell are you?”, Canada, New York
2022 “Why is a mushroom growing in my shower?”, David Zwirner London.
2020 Embajada, San Juan, Puerto Rico
2020 Carl Freedman Gallery, New York, NY, USA
2020 DONE WITH XANAX, Canada, New York, NY
2019 Big in Japan, NANZUKA, Tokyo, Japan
Garfield on Scotch Tape, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Belgium
GOLD, Art OMI, New York, NY
2018 Watermelon World, Mario Testino Museum (MATE), Lima, Peru
GREEN, CANADA, New York, NY
2017 Swatches, Karma, Amagansett, NY
Mural, Project Wall, St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO
Focus: Katherine Bernhardt, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX
Concrete Jungle Jungle Love, Lever House Art Collection, New York, NY
2016 Product Recall: New Pattern Paintings, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Belgium
2015 Strawberry Banana Power Smoothie, Carl Freedman Gallery, London, UK
Pablo and Efrain, Venus Over Manhattan, New York, NY
Fruit Salad, Venus Over Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
2014 Doritos and Diet Coke, China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles, CA
Stupid, Crazy, Ridiculous, Funny Patterns, CANADA, NY, New York
2013 Watermelon, Smiley Faces, Ice Cream, Popsicles, Avocado and Sun, Roberto Paradise, San Juan Puerto Rico
Holiday Services, Katherine Bernhardt and Youssef Jdia, The Hole, NYC, NY
2012 Nomad, Loyal Gallery, Malmo, Sweden
2011 Rites of Spring Passage, Carbon 12, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
2010 Hot Pop Time Machine, V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Public Collections:
— Alberto de la Cruz Foundation, Tao Baja, Puerto Rico
— Brant Foundation, Greenwich, CT, USA
— Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
— Hall Art Foundation, Reading, VT, USA
— High Museum, Atlanta, GA, USA
— Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, USA
— Mohammad and Mahera Abu Ghazaleh Foundation, Amman, Jordan
— Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, USA
— Rubell Collection, Miami, FL, USA
— San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX, USA
— Sandretto Foundation, Torino, Italy
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