Matthew Magee is an American contemporary artist who is best known for his minimal abstract geometric paintings, sculptures, prints, photography, assemblages and murals.
Magee was born in Paris, France in 1961 and raised in the state of Texas, USA. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas in 1983 and his MFA at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 1986.
Matt Magee has experimented widely with abstract and conceptual art practices using a multi-disciplinary approach in a career spanning more than four decades. Magee’s art not only responds to earlier abstract art but also alludes to contemporary scientific, ecological and technological advancements. Furthermore the artist utilises language and has dedicated entire works to a single phrase or word in an exploration of meaning through a symbolic, almost hieroglyphic visual format. Magee’s work constitutes a combination of high formalism and social responsibility.
Matt Magee has exhibited his work worldwide since the mid-1980s. He has had many solo shows and his work has been featured in over one hundred group exhibitions throughout the USA and Europe. Magee’s work is held in many private and public collections including the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History; Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, Connecticut; the Museum of Fine Art, Houston; Goldman Sachs, New York; John Kidd and Associates, Houston; and The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. He was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Award in 1991; received a New York State Foundation for the Arts Grant in 2002; the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Residency in Bethany, Connecticut in 2007 and 2015; and he was Artist in Residence at the Tamarind Institute in 2013 and 2016.
Matt Magee now lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona.