[5] Ryman soon took a day job at the Museum of Modern Art as a security guard to make ends meet, and met the artists Sol LeWitt and Dan Flavin, who were co-workers with him at MoMA.

[citation needed] Captivated by the newly acquired abstract expressionist works of Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, Ryman became curious about the act of painting.

[7] Ryman had a close relationship with the conservator Orrin Riley, who would frequently give him advice on archival materials, many times testing the acidity of media the artist was interested in using.

In 2009 he participated in the art project Find Me, by Gema Alava, in company of artists Lawrence Weiner, Merrill Wagner and Paul Kos.

[1][9] Ryman was often classified as a minimalist, but he preferred to be known as a "realist", explaining he was not interested in creating illusions, but only in presenting the materials he used in compositions at their face value.

"[10] The majority of his works feature abstract expressionist-influenced brushwork in white or off-white paint on square canvas or metal surfaces.

A lifelong experimenter with media, Ryman painted and/or drew on canvas, linen, steel, aluminum, plexiglas, lumasite, vinyl, fiberglass, corrugated paper, burlap, newsprint, wallpaper, jute sacking, fiberplate, a composite material called gator board, feather board, handmade paper, and acrilivin.

By the time Ryman began working, older artists like Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Philip Guston had already reduced painting to its essences.

The built-up paint edge tracing the outline of masking tape and the ripped paper left behind give witness to the process of creation.

In each of these works the pigment appears to form a membrane over the support due to the differing degrees of opacity and translucence in the white paint juxtaposed with areas where less of it has been applied, leaving the fabric exposed.

One year later, Ryman was included in When Attitudes Become Form, a seminal exhibition of works by Minimalist and Conceptual artists organized by the Kunsthalle Bern.

The Hallen für Neue Kunst, a former contemporary art museum in Schaffhausen, Switzerland (closed in 2014) had the largest public collection of Ryman's work, permanently exhibiting 29 pieces created from 1959 to 2007.

2009 saw the publication of Robert Ryman: Critical Texts Since 1967, edited by Vittorio Colaizzi and Karsten Schubert and published by Ridinghouse.

A comprehensive selection of over 60 essays and exhibition reviews has been collated into one volume, including texts by some of the most influential art historians and critics of their time; Yve-Alain Bois, Donald B. Kuspit, Lucy R. Lippard, Robert Storr and others.