Carroll Dunham (b. November 5, 1949) is a contemporary American painter and father of American actress Lena Dunham. Working since the late 1970s, Dunham's career reached critical renown in the 1980s when he first exhibited with Baskerville + Watson, a decade during which many artists returned to painting. He is known for his conceptual approach to painting and drawing and his interest in exploring the relationship between abstraction and figuration. His work playfully and crudely examines painting tropes and traditions. With thick black outlines and simple imagery—a blue sky, green trees, and pink flesh—he employs cartoonish semblances of nature and sexually grotesque imagery as a foil for experimenting with color and line.
His artworks are included in contemporary art collections around the globe and included in museum collections such as Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia and many others.
Dunham lives and works between Cornwall, CT and New York, NY with his wife and fellow artist Laurie Simmons.