Milton Avery
"Portrait of Gershon Benjamin"
c. 1945

Name: "Portrait of Gershon Benjamin"
Brand: Milton Avery
Rating: 5 (2 reviews)

$206,250List Price

About the Item

Jim’s of Lambertville Fine Art Gallery is proud to offer this piece by Milton Clark Avery (1885 - 1965). Regarded as one of America's most important artists of the twentieth century, Milton Avery was renowned for his lyrical, Matisse-inspired colorism and his poetic approach to nature. A vital force in the development of Modernism in America, Avery's work exerted a major influence on the Abstract Expressionist and Color-Field painters of the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Sand Bank (later Altmar), New York, in 1893, Avery moved with his family to Wilson Station, Connecticut, in 1898. Around 1905, he enrolled in a lettering class at the Connecticut League of Art Students in Hartford. However, after the course was cancelled, he transferred to a life-drawing class taught by Charles Noel Flagg. In the years ahead, Avery spent his spare time studying European Post-Impressionism, especially the work of the Fauves and the Expressionists. By 1918, Avery was attending classes at the School of the Art Society of Hartford, where he produced award-winning work in the portrait and life-drawing classes. In 1924, he became a member of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts. One year later he moved to New York City, studying briefly at the Art Students' League. He made his debut in a group exhibition organized by the Society of Independent Artists in 1927 and had his first solo exhibition at the Opportunity Gallery in 1928. He also continued his formal studies, taking occasional classes at the League until 1938. Avery's work of the 1930s suggests the influence of such German Expressionist painters as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. However, during the 1940's, he developed a style characterized by simplified and delicately-modulated color planes, inspired in particular by the art of the Fauvist painter, Henri Matisse. Although Avery's work always involved a recognizable subject such as figures in an interior, still lifes or landscapes he successfully achieved a subtle balance between representation and abstraction, permeating his oeuvre with a mysterious, inner sensibility. Indeed, Avery's aesthetic, based upon an intuitive, spiritual response to nature, set him very much apart from the mainstream art of the thirties and forties, which was dominated by Realism imbued with socialist and/or regionalist overtones. Avery's work thus stands as a critical link between the early European colorists and the artist of the New York School, such as Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler and Mark Rothko (who once described Avery as a "great poet-inventor who had invented sonorities never seen nor heard before"). In addition to painting in oil, Avery was also a gifted watercolorist. He also produced numerous drypoint etchings and monotypes, as well as drawings. Milton Avery died of a heart attack in New York in 1965. A preeminent figure in the tradition of American Modernism, he remains one of the few contemporary artists whose contributions have constantly been reevaluated with each development in American painting. Examples of Avery's work can be found in the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and in other major public collections throughout the United States.

Creator:
Milton Avery (1885 - 1965, American)
Creation Year:
c. 1945
Dimensions:
Height: 20 in (50.8 cm)Width: 16 in (40.64 cm)
Medium:
Oil,Board
Movement & Style:
Modern
Period:
1940-1949
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Lambertville, NJ
Reference Number:
Seller: JOL1108180201stDibs: LU3743625572

Shop All Milton Avery

Milton Avery

Milton Clark Avery was born in 1885 in Altmar, New York. Largely self-taught, Avery is today regarded as one of the great early modern American artists; his inspired palette, simplified forms and unwavering commitment to a figurative tradition have secured him a place not only in the canon but also in the hearts of the American public.

Always at odds with the dominant style of the time, be it the American Scene Painting and Social Realism of the 1930s and '40s or the Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s, Avery's oeuvre is a labor of singular dedication. As a boy, Avery worked factory jobs to help support his large family following their move to Connecticut in 1898. He did not seriously begin to pursue art until sometime following his father's death in 1905, when he intermittently attended classes at the Connecticut League of Art Students. He made his artistic debut in 1915 at the Wadsworth Atheneum's Fifth Annual Exhibition of Oil Painting and Sculpture.

In 1925 Avery relocated to New York to be closer to his future bride. Following his marriage in 1926 he was able to quit working and paint full time. At this time Avery replaced the light-drenched palette of his Hartford days with more muted tones. He also exchanged his heavy impasto for thin washes of pigment, which he used to create veiled fields of color.

In 1927 Avery exhibited with the Society of Independent Artists. Success quickly followed. Two of his paintings were selected for inclusion in a 1928 group show at the Opportunity Gallery in New York. Also in 1928, renowned collector Louis Kaufman became the first person to purchase a painting by the artist; and in 1929 Duncan Phillips purchased Winter Riders (1929) for the Phillips Memorial Gallery, making it Avery's first painting to enter a museum collection.

Avery's signature figurative style characterized by simple forms and flattened shapes filled with arbitrary color "in the manner of Matisse" was fully developed by the 1940s. His work as a colorist greatly influenced succeeding generations of artists, specifically Color Field painters Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Adolph Gottlieb. In 1944 he was given his first solo museum exhibition at the Phillips Memorial Gallery. That same year, he entered into a contract with famed dealer Paul Rosenberg, in which Rosenberg agreed to purchase 25 of Avery's paintings twice a year.

In 1952 the Baltimore Museum of Art hosted Avery's first museum retrospective, and Avery was the subject of a major article in Arts magazine by eminent art critic Clement Greenberg. In 1960 the Whitney Museum of American Art hosted his second museum retrospective.

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(Biography provided by Helicline Fine Art)