Vaughn Spann (b. 1992, Orlando, Florida) is an American contemporary artist working primarily on printmaking and painting.[1][2] His style moves between abstraction and figuration, and at times incorporates symbols such as the letter X into his paintings.[3] He lives and works in Maplewood, New Jersey.[4]
Vaughn Spann was born in Orlando, Florida, in 1992. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Rutgers University, New Jersey, in 2014, and received a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting and printmaking from the Yale School of Art, New Haven, in 2018.[5]
Vaughn has been shown at the Rubell Museum, Florida; the Pérez Art Museum, Florida; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Missouri, and others.[6][7] In 2020 he was one of Forbes "30 Under 30 in Art and Style" alongside Grace Lynne Raynes, Ilana Harris-Babou, Farah Al Qasimi, and Louis Fratino.[5][8]
The solo show Vaughn Spann: Trilogy was on view at Almine Rech gallery, New York, in 2023. The abundance of blues in his paintings have been associated with Stéphane Mallarmé’s 1864 poem “L’Azur.”[9]
In 2024, the Tampa Museum of Art displayed the one-person presentation Vaughn Spann: Allegories, a series of four large-scale mixed media prints on wood panels. Compositions in the show expanded on the artist's vocabulary such as the "X" shape in combination with art historical references.[10]
His work is held in institutions including the Pérez Art Museum Miami,[11] High Museum of Art, Atlanta;[5] North Carolina Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York, among others.[10]
