Emily Mason Art
Emily Mason was born in New York City in 1932. She graduated from New York City’s High School of Music and Art and studied at Bennington College for two years before attending and graduating from the Cooper Union. She spent 1956–58 in Italy on a Fulbright grant for painting, where she studied at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Venice.
During Mason’s two-year stay in Italy she married the painter Wolf Kahn, whom she had met earlier in New York. Mason and Kahn’s daughter, Cecily Kahn, is also an abstract painter, as was Emily Mason’s mother, Alice Trumbull Mason, a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group in New York.
Mason spent more than six decades exploring her distinctive vein of lyrical, luminous abstraction. Her paintings executed in oil are distinguished by a sense of intriguing intimacy combined with uncompromising, though gentle, intensity. They evince a sense of structure within open, luminous space and juxtapose robust color harmonies with vivid contrasts that create an engaging optical vibration.
Robert Berlind said of the artist in Art in America, “Mason works within the improvisational model of Abstract Expressionism, though notably without angst or bravado.”
Mason exhibited steadily throughout her career since she emerged on the Tenth Street gallery scene with multiple exhibitions at the Area Gallery in New York City in the 1960s. In 1979, she was awarded the Ranger Fund Purchase Prize by the National Academy. She taught painting at Hunter College for more than thirty years. Her work has been included in numerous public and private collections.
Emily Mason: The Fifth Element, a comprehensive treatment of her work by Art in America associate managing editor David Ebony, was published in 2006 by George Braziller publishers. A second monograph, Emily Mason: The Light in Spring, was published in 2015 by the University Press of New England.
Mason died in December of 2019 in Brattleboro, Vermont.
Find a collection of original Emily Mason paintings and other art on 1stDibs.
(Biography provided by Miles McEnery Gallery)
1970s Abstract Emily Mason Art
Paper, Oil
1970s Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Art
Graphite, Oil
1990s Contemporary Emily Mason Art
Etching, Monotype, Mixed Media, Pencil
Early 2000s Abstract Emily Mason Art
Paper, Ink, Mixed Media, Lithograph, Offset
1990s Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Art
Oil, Paper
1990s Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Art
Oil, Paper
1990s Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Art
Oil, Paper
1980s Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Art
Oil, Paper
1980s Emily Mason Art
Oil, Paper
1980s Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Art
Oil, Paper
1980s Emily Mason Art
Paper, Oil
1980s Emily Mason Art
Paper, Oil
1990s Abstract Emily Mason Art
Textile, Silk, Archival Ink, Digital, Archival Pigment
1980s Abstract Emily Mason Art
Paper, Ink, Etching
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Emily Mason Art
Fabric, Ink, Monotype
2010s Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Art
Paper, Ink, Gouache, Graphite
1960s Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Art
Paper, Oil
1960s Abstract Emily Mason Art
Lithograph
2010s Abstract Emily Mason Art
Cotton, Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Digital, Archival Pigment, Digital...
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Emily Mason Art
Fabric, Ink, Monotype
21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Art
Glaze, Oil Pastel, Acrylic, Carbon Pencil
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Emily Mason Art
Fabric, Ink, Monotype
1980s Abstract Emily Mason Art
Paper, Ink, Etching
2010s Abstract Emily Mason Art
Cotton, Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Digital, Archival Pigment, Digital...
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Art
Oil