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Keith Warner, by Parke-Bernet, New York, 15 December , lot William H. Weintraub, New York, acquired from the above. By descent to the present owner from the above. Initial compositions of the Madonna and Child, by the likes of Giotto and Cimabue in the thirteenth century, later by Titian, were carried on by Rapheal and others during the Renaissance, and further still into the Baroque. The subject transitioned from the religious context into the secular realm and was carried into portraits of English aristocracy, such as those by Joshua Reynolds during the eighteenth century, and the romantic realism of William-Adolphe Bouguereau, before being embraced by Impressionist painters of the late nineteenth century. However, unlike those who came before him, Avery set out to render such seemingly mundane yet contemplative subjects in a modern lexicon of forms that fit together into an equally poetic arrangement. When Rosenberg arrived in America in , he brought a cache of great works by important European artists, including Georges Braque, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, many of whom provided Avery with a new understanding on abstract representation. Picasso himself was no stranger to modernizing the age old subject of mother and child, addressing it on a number of occasions, including in Mother and Child , Art Institute of Chicago. He replaced the brushy paint application and graphic detailing that had informed his previous efforts with denser more evenly modulated areas of flattened color contained with crisply delineated forms. The result was a more abstract interlocking of shapes and a shallower pictorial space than he had previously employed. Avery retained color as the primary vehicle of feeling and expression, but achieved a greater degree of abstraction by increasing the parity between recognizable forms and abstract shapes. Avery has reduced the composition to a myriad of cutouts that fashion a cohesive puzzle of abstract forms. The painter creates tension and balance through his selection of complementary and contrasting colors and shapes. While he simplifies the scene to the broadest possible elements, he invigorates these shapes through his sophisticated use of variegated hues. The result is an emphasis on the central figure, pushing our focus forward to the mother figure and her intimate relationship with her child. As Avery noted, "I work on two levels. I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colors form a set of unique relationships independent of any subject matter. At the same time I try to capture and translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea. But Rothko and Gottlieb would come around and study his paintings and just absorb them by osmosis. One summer in Gloucester, Milton refused to show them what he was doing, because he felt they were becoming too dependent upon him. Avery, a representational painter, influenced the future development of abstract art. Avery wrote, "I am not seeking pure abstraction; rather, the purity and essence of the idea--expressed in its simplest form. His is the poetry of sheer loveliness, of sheer beauty. Thanks to him this kind of poetry has been able to survive in our time. This- alone-took great courage in a generation which felt that it could be heard only through clamor, force and a show of power. Cambridge, Mass. Neuberger Museum of Art , Purchase, N. Grove Art Online. The Davistown Museum. Retrieved 15 September American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 28 April Was Self-Taught". New York Times. January 4, Retrieved 20 April Arts Magazine. Breeskin, Milton Avery , Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. Retrieved 6 May Memorial Art Gallery Collection. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester. The Albert M. Greenfield American Art Resource Online. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. San Antonio Art League Museum. Retrieved Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Modern art , painting. Milton Avery’s modernism | Apollo Magazine

If it was his marriage that freed Avery to become a full-time painter for the first time, it was his move to New York that was decisive in making him the kind of painter he became. The training he had received in Hartford was solid but academic, and its outlook on art preety much precluded any awareness of the modern movement that had already shattered the academic tradition in Europe. Even in the New York art world of the 's, moderism remained an isolated and special interest, and one that was virgorously opposed by amny artists and most of the critics, collectors and museum curators. But it was there to be seen, all the same, in certain galleries and exhibitions, and it had at least one ardent champion in the press - Henry McBride, the critic who wrote for both The New York Suna dn the more highbrow Dial magazine. As early as , McBride mentioned Avery in a review of the large group exhibition of the Socieyt of Independent Artists that year; and in he wrote of Avery: ''He really is a colorist of exceptional ability. But Avery's own conversion to modernism was no overnight affair. And if he proceeded with a certain caution in this course, there was ample reason for it. All of Avery's closest contacts in the New York art world were painters of an academic dispostion. He was at home with their training, their tastes and their sense of tradition. They defined a world that was familiar to him - and he was anything but a rebel by temperment. Yet, at the same time, he found himself strongly drawn to something in the modernist painting that he now saw for the first time, and this began to separate him from the narrow outlook of academic taste. He recognized in the radical innovations of the modernists - especially in the work of Matisse and Picasso - a creative freedom and an imaginative release that elicited a deep personal response. Not being an intellectual, Avery took no interest in the doctrines or theories of the European modernists. What attracted him, rather, was the new range of pictorial possibilities he saw in their work. It opened up for him -and in him - a new world of feeling. He was not immediately prepared, however, to scuttle what he knew in favor of this new and unfamiliar world of daring expression. What he at first attempted, therefore, was a fusion of tradition and modernism, and this gave his art a very solid base from which to launch his subsequent innovations. It was unquestionably the work of Matisse that exerted the strongest single influence on Avery and completed his conversion to modernism. For it was Matisse, more than any other modern painter, who evolved a pictorial style based on pure structures of color. It was Matisse who introduced a formal pictorial vocabulary consisting of highly simplified shapes that served at once to eliminate the kind of modeling that is based on strong contrasts of light and shadow and to emphasize the essentially flat, two-dimensional nature of the painting surface. This was a more radical innovation in painting than many observers at the time including many sympatheric to the avant-garde quite appreciated - probably because, in Matisse's case, it was so conspicuously combined with an interest in subjects, such as female nudes and sundrenched landscapes, that were traditionally associated with pleasure. Avery was almost alone among American painters of the 's in finding an inspiration in Matisse. He paid a price for it, too. For it isolated him from the American art of his time. Academics hated everything that was associated with modern painting, including Matisse. For amny followers for the avant-garde, the cutting edge of modernism lay in Cubism and the kind of abstraction that came out of it. And the powerful supporters of the American Scene painters and the Social Realists in the 's considered an art like Avery's to be alien both to native experience and to the political imperatives of the Depression era. Nor could he expect much support from admirers of Matisse, for they tended to dismiss Avery as a mere imitator of the French master. It would be many years before Avery's originality came to be widely appreciated. Today, many artists at the age of 50 would already have had their retrospectives. But Avery at that age could count only on his wife and a few artist friends to appreciate what he was up to. One of these artists was Adolph Gottlieb, who later said of Avery in this period that he was ''a solitary figure working against the stream. Still, Avery persevered in this lonely course, and in the 's, his painting really developed in tse way that is now familiar to us. He became a bolder colorist, eliminating the last traces of naturalistic contrast in favor of close-valued color - color that gave a uniform visual weight and consistency to every part of the picture surface. To accommodate this change in his composition, he emphasized fewer and simpler shapes. And Avery painting came more and more to consist of a very few flat shapes containing exquisitely related colors, and the color grew increasingly independent of the themes that prompted it - less a matter of description and more of pure invention. The application of color also underwent an important change - a change that was to become even more marked in his paintings of the 's. He thinned his pigments to the consistency of watercolor so that color lay on the canvas surface more as a transparent veil than as an independent substance. This had the effect - especially in the great paintings of Avery's final period - of appearing to dematerialize the picture surface and making its constituent elements seem to float directly into the observer's eye. It was upon an effect like this that the abstract paintings of the Color Field school - those of Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski and others - came to rely. It can now be seen as one of the most original achievements in American painting - and in Avery's case it was a pure achievement of the painter's eye rather than the result of some theory or program. In the 's, Avery brought these developments to their most glorious realization and produced his greatest masterpieces. This is all the more astonishing and unaccountable when one considers Avery's circumstances at that time. In , he suffered a major heart attack, and he never fully recovered his health. In , his dealer, Paul Rosenberg, unceremoniously severed their relationship, and as if to underscore the fact that he wanted to have nothing more to do with Avery's art, he sold his stock of Avery paintings - some 50 works - in a package deal to the collector Roy R. Neuberger at a price guaranteed to depress whatever remaining market there was for the artist's work. Add to all this the fact that the rise of the Abstract Expressionists to critical favor in the 's had the effect of making avery seem a back number. Yet, far from being an artist at the end of his tether, Avery now went on to paint his finest pictures. In , while recuperating from his heart attack inFlorida and not yet strong enough to paint again, he began experimenting with monotypes. He found this medium, which calls for rapid execution - the thinned pigment is applied to a glass surface, adn the image must be ''printed'' wet - so appealing that he produced nearly prints. From Sept. His work in this medium proved to have important consequences for his painting when he was able to return to it. By thelate 's, Avery was applying color to his most ambitious paintings with a fluency, simplicity and directness that reflected his experience with the monotype medium. He had come a long way from his first explorations of this color-oriented style. In early pictures, like ''Sitters by the Sea'' , one can admire the delicacy with which grays, greens and grayish earth colors are assigned to the simplified figural shapes with which the painting is constructed, and the tonal consistency that is sustained throughout the picture. But the artist's palette remains subdued and conservative, adn there is an anecdotal element in the picture that conforms to the genre conventions of the period. By the time Avery came to paint a late work on a similar theme, such as ''Bathers by the Sea'' , his color had acquired a vibrancy that belongs to another order of expression. The whole scale of the picutre is built around its intensified color and radically flattened forms, and the anecdotal element in the painting has virtually disappeared. Whereas the early painting has a homely, goodhumored charm about it, the later one has the kind of archetypal grandeur and sweep that is to be found only among the masterworks of modern art. The great flowering had come in the late 's, when Avery was spending his summers in Provincetown on Cape Cod. He significantly enlarged the scale of his paintings for the first time, working on pictures that measured six feet across. Miss Haskell speculates that ''the large scale adopted by the Abstract Expressionists must have been a factor in Avery's decision'' to move to a larger picture surface, an there has been much speculation, too, as to whether the near-abstraction achieved in some of these late paintings were themselves influenced by Rothko and other painters of the Color Field school. Be that as it cay, the late Avery looks like the quintessential Avery to this observer. There is a lyric intensity int he landscape and seascape images unlike anything else in the art of our time. As in late Turner and late Cesanne, many of these images are characterized by an awesome concision. The canvas is divided into fewer and fewer formal components, and yet each strikes the eye with a compelling eloquence. The color now takes flight into the subtlest and most daring chromatic inventions Avery ever attempted. In my view, his late paintings represent a more impressive schievement than Rothko's, for they encompass a far greater range of experience and bring to it a subtler and more varied pictorial vocabulary. Avery's late paintings brought him some new admirers - amont them, the critic Clement Greenberg, who wrote an important article about Avery in And yet the breakthrough he had achieved in his art did not win him the status that his earlier paintings should have earned him. A retrospective of sis owrk at the Whitney Museum in failed to elicit any widespread enthusiasm. They art world was still not ready to acclaim him the master that he had become. The assumption remained that for painting to be ''major'' it had to be abstract, and that was a test that Avery's art continued to fail. At the memorial service held for Avery on Jan. He remained an odd man out to the end. In the years since Avery's death, however, a new generation has come of age that takes a very different view of the matter. The orthodoxy that made abstraction the sole touchstone of achievement has now pretty much collapsed. Abstraction is now seen to be but one of the many artistic options open to a serious painter, and not always the most fertile. Artists are once again interested in the problems of representation - in painting that has a direct and immediate attachment to observed experience. And certain other qualities that have long been an integral part of Avery's art - his humor, his wit and the elegance of his drawing - now stand a better chance of being appreciated at their true value. Further assessing Avery's place in American art history, Patterson Sims wrote in an essay for the Whitney Museum of American Art: "Early in Avery's career, when Social Realism and American Scene painting were the prevailing artistic styles, the semi- abstract tendencies in his work were viewed by many as too radical. In the s, a period dominated by Abstract Expressionism, he was overlooked by critics because of his adherence to recognizable subject matter. Nevertheless, his work, with its emphasis on color, was important to many younger artists, particularly to Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Helen Frankenthaler, and other Color Field painters. Riley II, Ph. For details, log onto nassaumuseum. To view the text of the exhibition catalogue please click here. Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional source by visiting the sub-index page for the Nassau County Museum of Art in Resource Library. Search Resource Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art. Milton Avery Biography, Life & Quotes | TheArtStory

The two had a daughter, March Avery , in For several years in the late s through the late s, Avery practiced painting and drawing at the Art Students League of New York. Roy Neuberger saw his work and thought he deserved recognition. With Avery's work rotating through high- profile museums , he came to be a highly respected and successful painter. The Phillips Collection in Washington, D. Avery had a serious heart attack in After his passing his widow, Sally Avery, donated his personal papers to the Archives of American Art , a research center of the Smithsonian Institution. Avery's work is seminal to American abstract painting — while his work is clearly representational, it focuses on color relations and is not concerned with creating the illusion of depth as most conventional Western painting since the Renaissance has. Avery was often thought of as an American Matisse , especially because of his colorful and innovative landscape paintings. His poetic, bold and creative use of drawing and color set him apart from more conventional painting of his era. Early in his career, his work was considered too radical for being too abstract; when Abstract Expressionism became dominant his work was overlooked, as being too representational. French Fauvism and German Expressionism influenced the style of Avery's early work, and his paintings from the s are similar to those of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. By the s, Avery's painting style had become more similar to Henri Matisse , and his later works use color with great subtlety. What was Avery's repertoire? His living room, Central Park , his wife Sally, his daughter March, the beaches and mountains where they summered; cows, fish heads, the flight of birds; his friends and whatever world strayed through his studio: a domestic, unheroic cast. But from these there have been fashioned great canvases, that far from the casual and transitory implications of the subjects, have always a gripping lyricism, and often achieve the permanence and monumentality of Egypt. He was, without question, our greatest colorist. Among his European contemporaries, only Matisse—to whose art he owed much, of course—produced a greater achievement in this respect. It would be in error to consider Avery's works on paper in watercolor, crayon, oil gouache, inks, and various other media as mere by-products in a process directed toward the production of oils on canvas. Although many of Avery's works on paper were developed into large scale oils, they are not merely preliminary studies, but works of art in their own right. These works on paper often reveal a high quality of execution, a freedom of form and technique, and an innovative spirit that make them among the most original and interesting creations of Avery's oeuvre. Hilton Kramer clearly affirms this assessment when he comments that,. That Avery's works on paper have consistently been considered an important part of his oeuvre is demonstrated by the frequency with which they have been exhibited, beginning as early as at the Frank K. Rehn Gallery in New York. Hilton Kramer, again making a point about the high quality of Avery's compositions on paper, says of his watercolors in particular that,. Avery's experimentation with various media and with different techniques on paper -- and particularly his proficiency with watercolor -- clearly had a great influence on the way he used and applied oil paint onto a canvas surface. Noel Frackman refers not only to the strength of Avery's watercolors, but also to his similar handling of watercolor and oil paint when he says that,. By diluting his oils to a very thin consistency with turpentine, Avery was able to use oils on canvas with a fluidity and transparency more associated with the application of watercolors on paper. The transparent, watercolor-like effects Avery achieved with thinned oil paint is clearly evident in such canvases as Spring Orchard of National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. Throughout his career, Avery experimented in his works on paper with a variety of new, little used, and largely ignored media and techniques. For example, when the flobrush, or felt-tipped pen, was first introduced around Avery immediately began to experiment with the new device. For the rest of his career, he would frequently use the flobrush to draw and sketch as in Sketch Class of In an essay on Avery's drawings, Burt Chernow commented that,. The use of "unacceptable" methods and materials such as using children's crayons, and mixing various media in a single composition, is common in Avery's drawings on paper. Such experimentations with material and combinations of technique make the works on paper among Avery's most innovative and progressive productions. Avery's works on paper are vital contributions to the development in twentieth century American art. They mark an increase in experimentation with a variety of drawing media and a breakdown of the valuation of works on canvas as inherently more prestigious than works on paper. Avery's monotypes also indicate an experimentation with largely ignored techniques and methods of artistic production. Although Avery made a great majority of his monotypes in Florida during the winters of and , Lawrence Campbell recalls that, "He continued to make them in the summer of which he spent in Woodstock After the summer of Avery made only a few monotypes, but some of them turned radically experimental. Monotype production is a very simple, almost primitive form of printing in which paint or ink is applied to glass, a smooth stone, or other flat surface. Paper is then pressed over that surface transferring some of the paint onto the paper and making a print. Since only one or two images can be made from any single application of paint, each monotype produced has a uniqueness and individuality antithetical to conventional notions of printing. After printing a monotype, Avery sometimes went back and touched up the image with pencil, crayon, gouache, or all three. The wide variety of experimental techniques employed by Avery in this process are expressed in detail by Lawrence Campbell:. The time involved in the procedure of moving from sketch or drawing, to works on paper in various media, to oil on canvas varies considerably. Avery frequently spent the winter months in New York developing the sketches he had made over the previous summer into oils on canvas. The practice of working principally on paper during the summer months was largely determined by a need for very portable materials when moving from location to location. When summer retreats involved less travel, works on canvas as well as works on paper were common. During the four summers spent between and in Provincetown, Avery worked on paper for the first half of the summer and then painted oils on canvas for the remainder of the season. Sally Michel recalls that the great majority of his forty extremely large oils produced in the late s were painted during those summers at Provincetown. Two versions of Sea Grasses and Blue Sea Museum of Modern Art, New York , both dated , are superb examples of a progression from compositions on paper to canvas within a single summer. Tangerine Moon and Wine Dark Sea of Collection of Sidney and Madeline Forbes , done during Avery's third Provincetown summer, was painted only a week after the artist's observance of the atmospheric phenomena that inspired the work. It is also evident, however, that Avery frequently based his canvases upon works on paper done many years earlier. Such is the case with the watercolor on paper called Lone Rock and Surf of which, eight years later in , was used as the model for the oil on canvas Advancing Sea Milton Avery Trust, New York. Similarly the mixed-media monoprint Sea and Stars of was only translated into the oil on canvas and entitled Stars and Sea in -- a span of nine years between. Avery frequently reworked much earlier compositions, a practice that accounts for the overall coherency and consistency of his art. Avery always painted on primed canvas. In the early years of his career he bought unsized cotton duck, stretched it himself, and primed the surface with white lead. Later, when he could afford it, he either bought pre-prepared stretchers or had his supports made for him. Avery chose never to work on linen, preferring a rough surface that would absorb his thinned paints. Regardless of the amount of time between the execution of the works on paper and translation to canvas, Avery's oils were always painted with great speed. In , a reporter for Time wrote of Avery, with little exaggeration: "By the time he approached his easel, his imagination was so disciplined by incessant drawing that on a good day he could finish off three paintings by evening. Through these works on paper Avery was able to formulate what he wanted a finished canvas to look like, and how he could technically achieve the desired results. Sally remarked that, "In Milton, the art and the person were one. He was all of one piece, and he always said he knew what the painting would look like before he touched a brush to the canvas. However, Avery's rapid execution of his oils should not be construed as merely a process of recopying a final work on paper; there is a great deal of conceptualization and thought accompanying each stage of the artist's creative process. Sally Michel said of her husband's mental formulation and theoretical organization, "The actual physical work was minor; the real painting was done in the head. She writes,. There is a progressive simplification of composition, elimination of detail, refinement of color values, and "formalization" of the image in Avery's systematic creative process. That Avery was able to execute his oils on canvas swiftly and self-confidently is clearly apparent in the great facility and expressiveness of the artist's brush strokes. Judy Marle remarks that, "The basic elements of each work are fixed before the canvas has been touched and are laid down with the minimum of second thoughts or shifting around The lack of fuss is apparent Avery's rapid painting greatly contributes to the results that, in the words of Charlotte Litchblau, " A progressive simplification of composition combined with a refinement of color are clearly evident, and finally, after clarifying the composition and color through works on paper, Avery was able to execute his oils on canvas with speed and confidence, with a sense of spontaneity and ease. T hroughout the s Avery increasingly simplified his compositions into fewer and fewer color shapes -- a development obvious in a work such as Card Players of Collection of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York at New Paltz ; the divisions between color shapes are more sharply defined than they had been or would be again. In addition, brush strokes in Avery's art became significantly less pronounced. He would frequently diffuse the forcefulness of his brushwork by rubbing over his painted surfaces with a rag, giving the color areas a smoother, more even quality and his canvases a greater flatness. Furthermore, the color of Avery's palette becomes increasingly lighter and more varied. At times, in a work such as Mother and Child of Private Collection , the color approaches vibrant strength that exceeds his usual tendencies toward more subtle, close-valued hues. Avery's continuous and progressive elimination of detail and simplification of composition reaches a climax with Maternity of Milton Avery Trust, New York. The flat oval forms of a mother holding a child in her lap are juxtaposed against three quadrilateral areas representing the floor and background space. In this work, Avery reduces the image to a level of abstract simplicity that would not appear again until his production of the large landscapes and seascapes during the late s. Although an image of great warmth and tenderness, the characteristic individuality of his figures is lost in the rigid geometric forms of Maternity. Avery would seldom again resort to such a high degree of abstract simplification in his figural works. The emergence of Avery's mature style of simple close-valued color areas was not an overnight development. Although the fundamental characteristics of this style can be discerned in a work such as Sitters by the Sea of Private Collection , it was clearly not until that Avery consistently produced paintings in his signature style. The s were for Avery a period of gradual artistic growth and continuous formal experimentation. Works such as Country Brook of see fig. These landscapes from the late thirties and early forties possess idiosyncratic detail, boldness of spatial organization, playful application of paint, and a quirky sense of drawing that clearly separates them from the calm simplicity of his later style. The hard edges, color areas, and intense hues of Avery's paintings of the mids, caused critics to consistently emphasize Matisse's influence on Avery's artistic development. Edward Alden Jewell commented in , for example, that, "Avery changes, as time marches on, yet somehow retains his fundamental kinship with Matisse and remains a metamorphosed Fauve. His forms grow larger, simpler, more sharply edged. His color grows brighter The similarities were apparent only in a period when both stood completely apart from the dominant manners of their countries. It is not particularly revealing to embark upon comparative study of the art of Avery and Matisse, but a few key contrasts between the two artists help to clarify the different styles, contents, and concerns of these artists. In contrast to with the art of Matisse, the adamantly anti-spectacular nature of Avery's subject matter and the overall sense of serenity in his work becomes clearly highlighted. The calm, almost puritanical quality of Avery's art is clearly recognized by John D. Longaker when he wrote,. In keeping with Longaker, I find Avery's subtle coloring, the common, unspectacular nature of his subject matter, and the overall sense of stillness and quietude achieved in Avery's best works less evident in the art of Matisse. In isolated works-such as Mother and Child of Private Collection -- Avery exhibits a tendency toward a free-flowing, curvilinear outline associated with the art of Matisse. However, more typical figural works by Avery -- such as Walker by the Sea of see fig. Avery's silhouettes develop empirically out of what he observes. He puts down what he sees -- irrational and awkward as it might be -- rather than blending the form to that expression of linear grace that characterizes Matisse. In addition, Avery generally does not rely on the vibrant color so basic to Matisse's art. On the whole, Avery's color is lighter, more subdued, and almost always concerned with expressing the aspect of the light. James Mellow also noted that, "In the matter of colorAvery is distinguished from Matisse. Avery concentrates more on light, and the quality of light, than on sumptuousness. Aware that the individuality of his style was frequently questioned through assertions of Matisse's influence, Avery responded, "Some critics like to pin Matisse on mebut I don't think he has influenced my work. In terms of the nature of their subject matter, their use of color, and the quality of their drawing, Avery and Matisse express fundamentally different aesthetic concerns. In the fall of , Avery had a heart attack. Sally was told that her husband would live for only a year at best. Although he would create some of his best work over the next decade and would live for more than fifteen years, Sally recalled that Avery never regained his earlier health after this first heart attack. Despite illness and pain, Avery's oils of the s carry his characteristic simplification of pictorial elements to a new, abstract level. Avery dramatically reduced the number of separate color areas within a composition and the larger canvases exhibit less and less extraneous idiosyncratic detail. These developments place greater emphasis upon the role of color in his work; the slightest inflections of hue or tone convey an exceedingly significant amount of pictorial information. As Avery increasingly minimizes the means he has to produce his art, the success of a painting depends more upon extremely subtle color relationships and carefully balanced compositions. Clement Greenberg clearly expressed this new level of refinement when he said,. From the beginning of the fifties, Avery experimented with various means of applying paint. His marked tendency during the s to rub out any distracting textural effects became less prevalent in the following decade, as is evident in such works as Sun Over Southern Lake of see fig. Avery's later works incorporated agitated passages of brushwork and violent strokes of paint. This trend culminated in a series of powerful works from including Dark Forest Collection of Mr. In these paintings, dramatic brushstrokes -- contrasting sharply with the lighter background on which they are painted -- cover almost the entire canvas surface. In these paintings, Avery returns to violently applying paint onto his canvases, a practice that he had suppressed since his work of the twenties and thirties. There is however, a fundamental departure from the way vigorous strokes of paint were used in the earlier work. Due to the larger size of the later works, individual brushstrokes created an overall pattern of turbulent paint slashes and fields of sinuous squiggles. In the later works, Avery's ability to handle the brush with an experimental freedom and expressive fluency is clearly evident. The broadness, length, and direction of the strokes usually remain the same within a defined area of the canvas, but dramatic changes often occur between fields. The turbulent and swirling swatches of paint serve to more clearly demarcate the distinct, simplified color shapes of the composition, rather than blur them. In addition, the power of Avery's later brush strokes often extend over the entire canvas surface, conveying a sense of the animated gestural motion the artist used to create them. This effect clearly links Avery with the so-called "action painters" of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Despite the tumultuous, painterly quality of Avery's late works, their clearly defined and greatly simplified composition hold even the most dramatic gestural flourishes in check. Throughout his career Avery carefully balances and juxtaposes value, hue, and intensity of color within his compositions. In many canvases, he also began to use textural effects to juxtapose and balance the simple shapes that populate his canvases. In Little Fox River of see fig. Similar contrasting textural effects appear in many of Avery's later works. These works on paper clearly exemplify Avery's skillful use of a diverse means of paint application-rather than luscious color-to define an image and construct a balanced composition. Another primary development in Avery's art of the s was dramatic augmentation of canvas size. During the s the average size of Avery's canvas was estimated to be thirty by forty inches -- a size clearly placing him within the long tradition of western easel painting. During the early fifties, Avery gradually began painting larger and larger canvases and composing his paintings with even fewer and more simplified areas of color and texture. This expansion of scale culminated in the series of very large oils executed during the summer months of , , and in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Within these large canvases, Avery's process of reducing his subjects into colored and textured forms reaches an extreme-and approaches the purely abstract. In , Thomas Garver was speaking of Avery's late work when he said, "Avery is able to deal with subject matter in such a way that the subject slips in and out of recognition, yet is never completely lost, teetering precariously on the edge of interpretation. Three horizontal bands with two differently colored geometrical shapes placed in the lowest band are enough to represent two towels on a sandy beach in Beach Blankets of Wichita Art Museum. This horizontal division of the canvas -- emphasized by horizontal rather than vertical brush strokes -- becomes increasingly pronounced in many late works. This has led some critics to draw similarities between Avery's paintings of the late fifties, and the floating, horizontally oriented rectangles in the work of Mark Rothko. While Avery's art can never be described as completely nonobjective or purely abstract, it progresses toward an abstract quality through a process of radical simplification and severe reduction of the visual array. Charlotte Lichtblau once commented that, "All of Avery's paintings are abstract but none of them are abstractions. Although they can hardly be said to be illusionistic, Avery's paintings are always to some degree representational. Harvey Miller once commented upon Avery's rejection of abstraction when he wrote, "It is in these late paintings, in which the identity of the locale is still recognizable and the painting is saved from pure color-field abstraction by an identifying object or shape, that Avery is working very close to the edge of abstraction and at the same time defining his rejection of it all the more meaningfully. If one concentrates upon the abstract quality of Avery's late art, the degree to which his imagery remains representational -- that is the degree to which Avery remains concerned with expressing the particular identity of his immediate subjects and the visual reality of his initial observations -- is clearly apparent. However, concentration upon the representational qualities of Avery's late canvases makes their abstract nature-their concern with inventive application of paint and the boldness of forms all the more evident. When working in such a minimal formal vocabulary bordering on abstraction, there is a danger that the composition will become too simplistic and lose its ability to hold the viewer's interest. The areas of color can become too generic and monotonous, making the painting appear vacuous or vapid as it loses its ability to refer to a unique visual observation. Furthermore, if the color and textural relationships do not reach a degree of exactness, that vital sense of light-filled space can quickly vanish or dissipate. It is Avery's recourse to his drawings and sketches -- not only for a simplification of form but also for a range of painting effects -- that maintains the crucial balance between abstraction and representation, between the non-objectivity and realism. The relationship between Avery's art and the Abstract Expressionist movement that emerged in New York during the late forties and gained prominence throughout the fifties has been a subject of ongoing focus. Reviewing the exhibition "Milton Avery and His Friends" at Grace Borgenicht Gallery, Peter Frank wrote, "Avery's relevance to Abstract Expressionism is well known, but when his paintings are hung in conjunction with Mark Rothko's, Adolph Gottleib's, William Baziotes', and Barnett Newman's, the correspondences continue to be surprisingly striking. Many of the abstract painters of the New York School reduced their compositions to simplified zones of color, often using methods of paint application such as staining to diffuse the edges between areas. Avery knew and frequently associated with both Rothko and Gottlieb as early as the late s. Sally Michel wrote that Rothko, "dropped in almost every day to see what Milton was painting. We spent summers together on Cape Anne where everyday we met at the beach for swimming and every evening we looked over the day's work. Adolph Gottlieb was there too and Barnett Newman joined us. Milton did a number of watercolors using these friends as models. But Rothko and Gottlieb would come around and study his paintings and just absorb them by osmosis. One summer in Gloucester, Milton refused to show them what he was doing, because he felt they were becoming too dependent upon him. Avery's early simplification of his compositions into relatively large areas of close-valued color, his use of gestural brushwork, his application of paint in thin stain- like washes, his diffusion and scumbling of edges of one color area into another, clearly had a strong influence upon the development of many members of the New York School. Andrew Hudson writes that,. Like both European and American modernists, Avery seeks to, as critic Hilton Kramer explains, "emphasize the essentially flat, two-dimensional nature of the painting surface " and explore the way color and light create atmosphere, mood, and allusion. In this portrait of his wife Sally, which she considered one of her favorites, Avery's signature style of flat, abstracted shapes and effusive color is on full display. Sally sits perched on a small stool against a background of creamy blue-green. Her attire is vibrant - a crimson skirt, a yellow blouse, a violet sweater flecked with red, and a mauve hat perched jauntily on her head - and her face is slightly tilted, staring out at the viewer with a content and cerebral gaze. Though the colors are lifelike enough, Sally's facial features are simplified, her figure is attenuated and abstracted, and the image is totally flat, lacking dimension or modeling. Artist's Wife is certainly a portrait, but like modernist master Henri Matisse, whom Avery admired greatly and was compared to often though Sally herself said it best when she succinctly stated the major difference between the two: "Matisse was a hedonist and Milton was an ascetic " , the focus here is more on color and shape rather than the depiction of an actual likeness. Avery, as a representative for DC Moore Gallery noted, " [had] an independent vision in which everything extraneous was removed and only the essential components were left," and was aptly lauded for his "chromatic harmonies of striking subtlety and invention. Avery's paintings from the s retained and expanded upon his visual vocabulary of saturated hues, robust shapes, and flat, abstracted subject matter. Here he paints Red Rock Falls, a popular destination in Glacier National Park, Montana, in perhaps the least representational terms for what is ostensibly a landscape painting. The river is two painted swathes of cream and lavender flowing from the upper middle part of the canvas. It divides the hills around it, which are rendered in hues of scarlet, lilac, and earthy brown and green. The sky, occupying a small strip of the top part of the canvas, is a sensuous pastel pink. A closer look yields crosshatched brushstrokes in faded gold on some of the cliff faces. Without the title to guide the viewer, Red Rock Falls appears almost completely abstract. Critic James Panero wrote that every time he looks at the painting, "[It] seems simple, but it refuses to give up its secrets. Like early Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann, Avery plays with painted shapes and explores how their placement and juxtaposition of color creates a push-pull effect. Panero also notes, "[Its] ideal of interlocking shapes and colors Content compiled and written by Kristen Osborne-Bartucca. Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors. The Art Story. Ways to support us. Movements and Styles: Early American Modernism. I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colors, form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter.

Fine Art and Etchings - Milton Avery

Avery, a representational painter, influenced the future development of abstract art. Avery wrote, "I am not seeking pure abstraction; rather, the purity and essence of the idea--expressed in its simplest form. His is the poetry of sheer loveliness, of sheer beauty. Thanks to him this kind of poetry has been able to survive in our time. This-alone-took great courage in a generation which felt that it could be heard only through clamor, force and a show of power. But Avery had that inner power in which gentleness and silence proved more audible and poignant. It is this reinterpretation that cemented his legacy and proved invaluable to the development of post-War abstraction, while never fully abandoning representational painting. This conviction of greatness, the feeling that one was in the presence of great events, was immediate on encountering his work. It was true for many of us who were younger, questioning, and looking for an anchor. This conviction has never faltered. It has persisted, and has been reinforced through the passing decades and the passing fashions. During the first half of the 20th century — the golden age of American illustration — artists such as Rockwell and Wyeth helped to define a nation's identity. Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift and Bradley Cooper are among the stars donating guitars and other items in aid of the music industry in Nashville. A view of Dalva Brothers: Parisian Taste in New York, showcasing the finest examples of 18th century French furniture, porcelain and sculpture. Sale American Art. New York 19 November Browse Sale. Previous Lot Search. Lot 30 Property from a Private Collection Read more. Milton Avery Price realised. Follow lot. Add to Interests. Contact Client Service info christies. Recommended features. The T. To Nashville with love Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift and Bradley Cooper are among the stars donating guitars and other items in aid of the music industry in Nashville. Avery has always been recognized as a colorist of the highest quality and most inventive means. Avery is able to utilize color itself as a means of suggesting and emphasizing mass, weight, and three-dimensional form in his paintings. Avery possessed a wide vocabulary of squiggly lines, calligraphic brush strokes, and scratched or scraped designs creating an extremely witty dialogue through minimal design Fig. Avery frequently gives his figures an exaggerated, almost awkward perspective. This exaggerated perspective—produced through a proficiency in drawing, never through mathematical or theoretical calculations—endows his figures with a sense of solidly occupying a pictorial space that often recedes dramatically into depth Fig. Avery recognized the early role careful observation of nature in the countryside surrounding Hartford, Connecticut, played in the production and development of his art. Avery produces light-filled landscapes and seascapes through a direct use of close-valued color, seldom rendering the shadows produced by objects to convey the existence of a light source. The expression of particular conditions of light emerged as the primary focus in his extremely simplified compositions of the late s. With a few brush strokes, Sun over Southern Lake of captures the visual impression of an evening sun across the surface of calm waters. I always take something out of my pictures, strip the design to essentials; the facts do not interest me so much as the essence of nature. I never have any rules to follow. I follow myself. I began painting by myself in the Connecticut countryside, always directly from nature…. I have long been interested in trying to express on canvas a painting with a few, large, simplified spaces. Avery began to paint from previously executed works on paper only after many years of painting directly from nature. This experience undoubtedly contributed greatly to his artistic development, particularly to his penchant for capturing the specific identity of his subjects. As other painters had done for centuries, Avery only later in his development made sketches and drawings directly before his subjects, to capture—and later call back to memory—an initial visual experience. However, the multiplicity of miscellaneous detail is never re-imposed upon the image when it is translated from a small sketch into a larger work. In fact, perhaps, just the opposite: in the execution of the interim works on paper, Avery further simplified his compositions, eliminating illusionistic detail, and refining his color values Fig. It is difficult to precisely date when Avery began to base his oils on canvas on previously executed works on paper. After a personal interview with Avery in , an anonymous reporter paraphrased that Avery, …works largely from sketches, getting an initial stimulus or reaction from nature. Before he starts a canvas, the idea has been pretty well crystallized so the actual painting is rapid, and retains a feeling of spontaneity, a quality achieved through long consistent practice, guided by fine sensitivity to color and balances. Although they can hardly be said to be illusionistic, his paintings are always to some degree representational. Avery, a representational painter, influenced the future development of abstract art…. Avery knew and frequently associated with both Rothko and Gottlieb as early as the late s. Milton did a number of watercolors using these friends as models. But Rothko and Gottlieb would come around and study his paintings and just absorb them by osmosis. One summer in Gloucester, Milton refused to show them what he was doing, because he felt they were becoming too dependent upon him.

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