Ronald Davis valuation

Ronald Davis (1937–2025) was born in Santa Monica, California, and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He attended the University of Wyoming in 1955 and 1956, took up painting in 1959 and studied at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1960 to 1964. From 1963 his paintings became hard-edged, geometric and optical, and he went on to make illusionistic shaped works on fibreglass, mixing coloured pigment into fluid resin that hardens quickly, so that colour can be built up in many layers, an approach that drew on Duchamp's use of glass and perspective. The Dodecagon series belongs to this period. The critic Michael Fried praised the paintings he showed at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York, where he had his first solo exhibition, and Leo Castelli gave him a solo exhibition in 1968. He lived and worked in Los Angeles and Malibu, and from 1991 at Arroyo Hondo near Taos, New Mexico, and he later also worked with 3D computer graphics. His work is in the Museum of Modern Art, Tate, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Besides the fibreglass and resin paintings he made prints and, later, computer-generated works. Resin and fibreglass can yellow, craze or chip at the edges, so check the surface and corners closely. Keep the title, date and any gallery invoice with a work, and for a print note the edition number and the publisher.