Alhambra 3 Ramon Enrich

Catalan painter Ramón Enrich creates images both hypnotic and surreal that are filled with geometric and architectural shapes, including flat-roof homes, stair labyrinths and cone trees. His distinct, grid pattern style is reminiscent of building planning, and is joined with a sophisticated use of color and light.

Enrich began his art studies in 1985 at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. He majored in graphic arts at the Gremi d’Arts Gràfiques de Catalunya and studied art history at the University of Barcelona. As a student, he traveled on school exchanges to the Beaux-Arts de Paris and Berlin’s University of the Arts before moving to the United States. He sought out American artist Donald Judd and English painter David Hockney and spent time learning from them at the Judd Foundation and the Chinati Foundation. 

Enrich wished to learn how to “organize one’s life as an artist.” His methodological approach is evident in his work, as he often begins a painting with a grid pattern and adds building structures according to the blueprint. While Enrich’s strict, sharp lines map his paintings, his use of warm colors and light offers a playful counterpoint, giving the work a serene sense of balance.

Enrich has exhibited his work in galleries worldwide for over three decades. Major museums with his art in their collections include the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany; the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa; and the Museu-Arxiu de Sant Andreu de Llavaneres in Barcelona, Spain. Private collectors include David Hockney, English architect Norman Foster and the Donald Judd Collection. Companies like Spanish banks La Caixa and Banco Santander, the Spanish telecommunications company Fundación Telefónica and German investment banking company Deutsche Bank have also collected Enrich’s work.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of Ramón Enrich’s paintings, mixed media, sculptures and more.

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.

It could be argued that cave walls were the canvases for the world’s first landscape paintings, which depict and elevate natural scenery through art, but there is a richer history to consider.

The Netherlands was home to landscapes as a major theme in painting as early as the 1500s, and ink-on-silk paintings in China featured mountains and large bodies of water as far back as the third century. Greeks created vast wall paintings that depicted landscapes and grandiose garden scenes, while in the late 15th century and early 16th century, landscapes were increasingly the subject of watercolor works by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolomeo.

The popularity of religious paintings eventually declined altogether, and by the early 19th century, painters of classical landscapes took to painting out-of-doors (plein-air painting). Paintings of natural scenery were increasingly realistic but romanticized too. Into the 20th century, landscapes remained a major theme for many artists, and while the term “landscape painting” may call to mind images of lush, grassy fields and open seascapes, the genre is characterized by more variety, colors and diverse styles than you may think. Painters working in the photorealist style of landscape painting, for example, seek to create works so lifelike that you may confuse their paint for camera pixels. But if you’re shopping for art to outfit an important room, the work needs to be something with a bit of gravitas (and the right frame is important, too).

Adding a landscape painting to your home can introduce peace and serenity within the confines of your own space. (Some may think of it as an aspirational window of sorts rather than a canvas.) Abstract landscape paintings by the likes of Korean painter Seungyoon Choi or Georgia-based artist Katherine Sandoz, on the other hand, bring pops of color and movement into a room. These landscapes refuse to serve as a background. Elsewhere, Adam Straus’s technology-inspired paintings highlight how our extreme involvement with our devices has removed us from the glory of the world around us. Influenced by modern life and steeped in social commentary, Straus’s landscape paintings make us see our surroundings anew.

Whether you’re seeking works by the world’s most notable names or those authored by underground legends, find a vast collection of landscape paintings on 1stDibs.