Milton Avery
(1885–)
(–1965)
Milton Avery
1885–1965
Milton Avery (1885–1965) was an American modern painter. He studied at the Connecticut League of Art Students in Hartford from 1905 to 1918 and then at the Art Society in Hartford. He moved to New York in 1925 to pursue his practice.
Although Avery’s work is representational, it was foundational to American Abstract painting since it was not as concerned with creating an illusion of depth and primarily focused on colour. However, when abstract Expressionism became dominant, his work was overlooked for being too representational.
Avery’s early work was influenced by French Fauvism and German Expressionism, also being likened to both Matisse and Edward Kirschner. Although Avery exhibited extensively during the 1930s, he entered the mature phase of his practice in the early 1940s. He is generally known as a strong colourist and had a profound influence on artists such as Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. From 2001 to 2002 the major exhibition “Milton Avery: The Late Paintings” travelled to the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach and the Milwaukee Art Museum in Wisconsin. Avery’s works are also held in the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Tate Gallery in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.
