Carroll Dunham, one of the most important representatives of contemporary figuration, was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1949. He completed his studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
Subsequently the young artist went to the metropolis New York. Initially he worked as assistant of the painter Dorothea Rockburne, then as graphic artist for "Time Magazine" and eventually worked as teacher at Columbia University.
As artist Carroll Dunham appeared in public as of the late 1970s. His linear, but yet picturesque style, initially still geared at abstraction, draws from an interest in psychedelic image worlds, but also from an interest in automatic methods of Surrealism. With these intuitive, hormic and subjective works Carroll Dunham also opposes the era's strict post-minimalist tendencies.
Surrealists, particularly Yves Tanguy and Roberto Matta, influenced Carroll Dunham beyond the methodic approach to automatism, which shows in figurative elements of his art that have become part as of the 1980s. Vegetable or technical structures, symbols of both phallic and vaginal character and many other formations unite in Carroll Dunham's works and make for fantastic beings.
In the 1990s figurative tendencies in Carroll Dunham's paintings and graphic works increases and comes close to the imagery of comic strip. Carroll Dunham opposes the banality of this context with a very thoughtful and intellectual pictorial language.
Works by Carroll Dunham are on display at the New York Museum of Modern Art and the Cologne Museum Ludwig. The artist, who was awarded the "Skowhegan Medal for Distinction in Painting" in 2004, lives and works in New York.