Stephen Mueller (1947 – 2011) was born in Norfolk, VA. He earned his B.F.A. at the University of Texas, Austin, then travelled to Bennington College for his M.A. When Mueller arrived at Bennington in 1969, the theories of Clement Greenberg and the Color Field painters who followed him continued to dominate the campus. At Bennington, Mueller absorbed the radiant palette and technical approach of Color Field painting, along with the strong conviction that the Greenbergian mantra of pure abstraction was not a theory to which he would subscribe. As a graduate student, Mueller was already exhibiting in New York City at the Richard Feigen Gallery, and so after graduating he moved to New York to pursue a budding career. In the late 1970s, Mueller came to be a part of the loosely-affiliated group of artists that would later be recognized as transformative to American abstract painting, including Mary Heilmann, Jonathan Lasker, Elizabeth Murray, Thomas Nozkowski, David Reed, Pat Steir, Gary Stephan and others who emerged in the wake of Minimalism, Pop Art, and Color Field as champions of subjective painting.

During his lifetime, Stephen Mueller had almost 50 solo exhibitions of his work in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Most recently in 2018, the Hunter College Art Galleries presented a comprehensive exhibition of Mueller’s work in the show Stephen Mueller: Orchidaceous. His work can be found in many public art collections, including The Whitney Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, High Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Portland Museum of Art, and The Denver Museum of Art. During his life, Mueller was awarded numerous grants and coveted fellowships from highly respected foundations, such as the NEA, NYFA, the Gottlieb Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and others.