American artist Zio Ziegler (b. 1988, United States) is known for his paintings, large-scale murals, and sculptures. He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Brown University, receiving his BFA from RISD in 2010. For Ziegler, painting is an act of self-exploration and a radical expression of vulnerability. “Painting is my attempt at self-understanding — rather than finding a concept and executing it in a linear fashion, I react to my questions, life, and awareness,” he claims.

The focus of Ziegler’s practice aims to illuminate the process of creating instead of isolating the final result. His images of monumental figures set in motion serve as a portal of sorts for the viewer, inviting them to perceive the work in their own way, and in turn, creating an active exchange between the artist and the audience. Using primarily oil-stick, Ziegler works with textures that fuse the raw oil pigment with external materials such as sand, soil, and pumice. His sources of inspiration, though ever-changing, include early 20th-century abstraction, Italian Futurism, and Cubism, and call to mind the likes of Francis Bacon, Kazimir Malevich, and Constantin Brancusi. His images of monumental figures set in motion serve as a portal of sorts for the viewer, inviting them to perceive the work in their own way and, in turn, creating an active exchange between the artist and the audience.

Recent solo exhibitions include The Fourth Wall at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (2018) and Et in Arte Ego at Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy (2014). Ziegler has been commissioned by the United Nations for a 70th-anniversary commemorative mural in Oakland, California, US, and has been teaching at Stanford University since 2019. Public collections include Rubell Museum, Miami; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai and Colleción Solo, Madrid, Spain.