The Collection

Vaughn Spann is a contemporary painter whose practice moves fluidly between abstraction and figuration, often incorporating symbolic motifs such as the American flag, the letter X, and radiating forms to explore themes of identity, history, memory, and place. His paintings balance formalist concerns of color, line, and shape with deeply personal and historical narratives, creating compositions that reflect both metaphysical inquiry and lived experience. Known for working across multiple stylistic approaches, Spann embraces experimentation with materials and processes as a means of reconciling abstraction with content.

Spann received his BFA from Rutgers University (2014) and MFA from the Yale School of Art (2018), where he was awarded the Alice Kimball Traveling Fellowship (2017). Since then, he has exhibited widely at institutions and galleries including Gagosian, Blum & Poe, Almine Rech, David Castillo, and Half Gallery. His work has been acquired by numerous public and private collections, among them the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), ICA Miami, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Montclair Art Museum, High Museum of Art (Atlanta), North Carolina Museum of Art, Rubell Museum (Miami), and the UBS Art Collection.