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Exhibitions
Magazine

Robert Ryman: The Real Thing

Robert Ryman

Barbican Art Gallery
,
London
October 8, 2026
—
February 28, 2027

A major Barbican retrospective brings together more than 60 works by Robert Ryman, tracing six decades of radical attention to paint, support, surface and light.

EXHIBITION DETAILS
GALLERY
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS, United Kingdom
DATES:
October 8, 2026
to
February 28, 2027
ARTISTS
Robert Ryman
CURATOR
PHOTOGRAPHER
LOCATION
London

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Robert Ryman: The Real Thing brings together more than 60 works made from the mid-1950s to the early 2010s in a major retrospective at Barbican Art Gallery.

Ryman is best known for paintings that often use white paint and a square format, but the exhibition foregrounds the extraordinary variety of his materials, supports, fastenings and surfaces. His work asks viewers to pay close attention to the physical facts of painting: brushwork, texture, scale, light and the relationship between an object and the wall around it.

The exhibition is the first major UK survey of Ryman’s painting in more than three decades.