Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
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 Abstract Paintings
Oil, Graphite
1980s Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Paper, Oil
1940s Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Paper, Oil, Tempera
2010s American Modern Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Paper, Oil
2010s Abstract Geometric Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Canvas, Gouache, Archival Paper, Color Pencil, Graphite
Donise EnglishBlue & Grey Green Plan: Abstract Geometric Framed Painting in Cool Toned Palette, 2020
2010s Abstract Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil, Archival Paper
2010s Contemporary Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Gold Leaf
2010s Analytic Cubist Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Paper, Oil, Acrylic
21st Century and Contemporary Post-Modern Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Canvas, Polystyrene, Wood, Paper, Oil, Stretcher Bars
Early 2000s Contemporary Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Canvas, Paper, Oil, Pencil, Stretcher Bars
2010s Contemporary Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Enamel
2010s Abstract Geometric Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Canvas, Gouache, Archival Paper, Color Pencil, Graphite
2010s Abstract Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Ink, Archival Paper, Graphite
2010s Contemporary Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil, Acrylic, Archival Paper, Mixed Media
1990s Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil, Paper
1990s Abstract Expressionist Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil, Paper
1980s Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Paper, Oil
1970s Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil
1970s Emily Mason Abstract Paintings
Oil