Born in Marshalltown, Iowa, Thor Rinden (1937-2009) worked for four decades in the privacy of his Brooklyn, NY studio, producing luminous and profound paintings on canvas, wood, and paper. His work employs ingenious construction, innovative form, and sumptuous color.  

Rinden’s work is in the permanent collections of many museums and institutions, including the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, the Fisher Museum of USC, the Smith College Museum of Art, the University of Iowa’s Stanley Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Public Library’s Center for Brooklyn History, Bentley Hall Honors College at Drexel University, and Oxford University (Corpus Christi Museum) in Oxford, UK.

A Rinden retrospective in January of 2024 at the National Arts Club will highlight the wide range of influences at play in the artist’s work: the geometry of the heartland, abstract painters such as Malevich, Mondrian, and Rothko, men’s fashion, and the landscapes he admired during his travels. Many of the pieces showcase the artist’s innovative techniques for reworking canvases. Rinden’s “wovens” feature interlocking strips of painted canvas, while his “slabs” embed meticulously constructed canvases into larger frames. 

The retrospective is a rare and final opportunity for Rinden’s friends and admirers to own and appreciate his work and coincides with the launch of an online sale of his work. He would have delighted in knowing that the work was hanging in homes where it can be appreciated on a daily basis.

Thor and his wife Jane valued arts education, and all proceeds from the sale of Rinden’s artwork will support the youth education program at Pioneer Works, a nonprofit interdisciplinary cultural center in Red Hook, a neighborhood near Rinden’s Brooklyn home and studio.