Born in 1967 to Dutch-Indonesian immigrant parents, Alexander Couwenberg was exposed to art and culture from a very young age.
In his childhood home in California, where both Dutch and Indonesian were spoken, he was taught to understand and appreciate the art of Indonesia and the craft associated with the Dutch masters. His parents recognized his early interest in the arts and encouraged him to participate in formal art education as early as elementary school.
After showing great potential in painting and drawing in his high school years, Couwenberg went on to earn an Associates Degree in studio art from Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California.
Couwenberg applied to the famed Art Center School of Design in Pasadena, California, were he was immediately accepted in the Illustration Department. Couwenberg then worked as a freelance illustrator to pay his tuition at Art Center and still managed to earn his Illustration degree in a record three years.
Although Couwenberg was very interested in illustration, the process of painting itself was more moving to Couwenberg than producing work that was commercially driven. He decided to enroll in a graduate program that focused on painting.
Couwenberg was accepted to the art program at the Claremont Graduate School under the direction of Roland Reiss. Couwenberg worked for two years under the instruction of artists Karl Benjamin, Roland Reiss, John Millei, and David Amico where he won a Merit Scholarship and went on to earn his Masters Degree in 1997.
Immediately after he earned his MFA, he was picked up by the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Los Angeles where he has had several solo exhibitions. Drawn to the mid century movement of non-objective abstract painting, Couwenberg’s connection with mentor Karl Benjamin was instrumental in the development of Couwenberg’s painting style and process.
Couwenberg is represented in New York by Markel Fine Arts, in Los Angeles by William Turner Gallery, in Laguna Beach by Peter Blake Gallery, in San Francisco by Dolby Chadwick Gallery in Sun Valley by Gilman Contemporary, in St. Louis by Bruno David Gallery and in Canada by Sopa Fine Arts. He has shown all over the United States in solo and group shows, shown in Europe and Asia and his work is in several museum collections.
Recently, Couwenberg’s work was purchased for inclusion into the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art and Crocker Art Museum's permanent collections, his work is included in “Out of Line” a traveling exhibition curated by the Riverside Art Museum focusing on the contributions of non-objective painting in Southern California. Couwenberg was recently awarded the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for his achievements in painting.
Less