News

The New York Times

By Roja Heydarpour | January 27, 2007

Dan Christensen, an abstract painter best known for his unfettered use of color in various styles, including Color Field painting and lyrical abstraction, died last Saturday in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 64. The cause was heart failure due to polymyositis, a muscle disease, said his wife, Elaine Grove.

In 1967 Mr. Christensen, finding the realism of his classical training restrictive, began using spray guns to paint colorful stacked loops on canvas, a technique that won him critical acclaim. He started by spraying over square pieces of tape, then removing them, creating a grid. The grids turned into tightly coiled loops, which graduated to looser whirls and finally broke into strokes and lines of color.

Mr. Christensen was concerned as much with the interaction of colors as with the process and pleasure of the act of painting, which guided much of his experimentation. The spray paintings soon gave way to saturated blankets of color underneath a coat of dark, and later white, paint, in the early to mid-1970s. He would then use a squeegee to scrape away the top layer and reveal some of the vibrant colors underneath. These works were not as well received as the spray paintings.

Daniel James Christensen was born in Cozad, Neb. He was inspired to be a painter when he took a trip to Denver as a teenager and saw some of Jackson Pollock’s work. Mr. Christensen graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri with a B.F.A. in 1964 and started graduate work at the University of Indiana. But he abandoned school and in 1965 moved to New York City, where he began his life’s work.

Mr. Christensen painted until his death. His works are featured in museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Twenty-three of his paintings are at the Spanierman Modern gallery in Manhattan.

Mr. Christensen is survived by his second wife, Ms. Grove; his sons James and William, of Brooklyn; his son from a previous marriage, Moses Lindebak, of Scottsdale, Ariz.; two sisters, Marilyn David of Estes Park, Colo., and Kay Remus of Omaha; and one brother, Don, of New York City.