Robert Ryman (1930–2019) was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Ryman moved to New York in 1953 to pursue a career as a professional jazz musician. That same year, he took a job as a security guard at The Museum of Modern Art, where he would work for seven years. His time working at the museum in part inspired Ryman to devote his life toward painting. His first institutional solo exhibition was at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1972. 

Dieter Schwarz is a curator and writer. He has organized numerous exhibitions and contributed to publications on artists from early modernity to the present, including Pierre Bonnard, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman.