Donald Baechler was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1956, and was raised in a Quaker household. After graduating from the Westtown School, a private Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania, he attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore, from 1974-77, Cooper Union in New York City from 1977-78, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, "Staedelschule", in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, from 1978-79.
After a year in Germany, he returned to New York City, and by the mid-80s, he had gained national attention for his paintings, which combined collaged and painted-over backgrounds with simple images of popular objects, like flowers, figures, faces and trees.
Baechler's work can be found in museums and private collections including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Trent, Italy; the Eli Broad Foundation in Los Angeles; the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janiero, Brazil; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
