Gene Davis More Prints
American, 1920-1985
Davis was born in Washington D.C. in 1920 and spent nearly all his life there. Before he began to paint in 1949, he worked as a sportswriter, covering the Washington Football Team and other local teams. Working as a journalist in the late 1940s, he covered the Roosevelt and Truman presidential administrations, and was often President Truman's partner for poker games. His first art studio was in his apartment on Scott Circle; later he worked out of a studio on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Davis's first solo exhibition of drawings was at the Dupont Theater Gallery in 1952, and his first exhibition of paintings was at Catholic University in 1953. A decade later he participated in the "Washington Color Painters" exhibit at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in Washington, DC, which traveled to other venues around the US, and launched the recognition of the Washington Color School as a regional movement in which Davis was a central figure. The Washington painters were among the most prominent of the mid-century color field painters. Though, he worked in a variety of media and styles, including ink, oil, acrylic, video, and collage, Davis is best known by far for his acrylic paintings (mostly on canvas) of colorful vertical stripes, which he began to paint in 1958. The paintings typically repeat particular colors to create a sense of rhythm and repetition with variations. One of the best-known of his paintings, "Black Grey Beat" (1964), owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum reinforces these musical comparisons in its title. The pairs of alternating black and grey stripes are repeated across the canvas, and recognizable even as other colors are substituted for black and grey, and returned to even as the repetition of dark and light pairs is here and there broken by sharply contrasting colors.
In 1972 Davis created Franklin's Footpath, which was at the time the world's largest artwork, by painting colorful stripes on the street in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the world's largest painting, Niagara (43,680 square feet), in a parking lot in Lewiston, NY. His "micro-paintings", at the other extreme, were as small as 3/8 of an inch square.
For a public work in a different medium altogether, he designed the color patterns of the "Solar Wall," a set of tubes filled with dyed water and backlit by fluorescent lights, at the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Davis began teaching in 1966 at the Corcoran School of Art, where he became a permanent member of the faculty. His works are in the collections of, among others, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
He died on April 6, 1985 in Washington, DC.to
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Artist: Gene Davis
Sweet Carburetor, from Series II
By Gene Davis
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Gene Davis
Title: Sweet Carburetor
Portfolio: Series II
Medium: Screenprint on canvas laminated to board
Year: 1969
Edition: 110/150
Frame Size: 36 1/2" x 26 1/2"
Sheet Size:...
Category
1960s Abstract Gene Davis More Prints
Materials
Screen
Tightrope: abstract modern minimalist color field drawing with rainbow colors
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
Rainbow shades shine in delicate clusters of vertical lines, in this abstract, geometric lithograph. Vibrant yellow, green, magenta pink, blue and brown take on the organic quality o...
Category
1970s Abstract Gene Davis More Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Narcissus Gene Davis minimalist abstract color field lithography with blue
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
Vertical lines in muted colors take on the organic quality of handmade paper, resulting in this subtle iteration of Gene Davis’ iconic color field stripe paintings. The title "Narcis...
Category
1970s Abstract Gene Davis More Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Ferris Wheel: abstract modern minimalist color field drawing with rainbow colors
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
This geometric, minimalist print glows in rainbow shades. Vibrant raspberry pink, magenta, yellow, lime green, and sky-blue lines take on the organic quality of handmade paper, resul...
Category
1970s Abstract Gene Davis More Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Home Run: abstract modern minimalist color field drawing with rainbow colors
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
Rainbow shades shine in this abstract, color field print. Vibrant red, yellow, orange, purple, and green lines take on the organic quality of handmade paper, resulting in this subtle...
Category
1970s Abstract Gene Davis More Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Royal Curtain
By Gene Davis
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Gene Davis
Title: Royal Curtain
Medium: Screenprint on Arches paper
Date: 1980
Edition: 61/250
Frame Size: 35" x 26 1/2"
Sheet Size: 29 3/4" x 21 3/4"
Signature: Hand signed ...
Category
1980s Gene Davis More Prints
Materials
Screen
Bullet Proof, from Series I
By Gene Davis
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Gene Davis
Title: Bullet Proof
Portfolio: Series I
Medium: Screenprint on canvas laminated to board
Date: 1969
Edition: AP (one of 25 artist's proofs, aside from the edition ...
Category
1960s Color-Field Gene Davis More Prints
Materials
Screen
Zebra, from Series II
By Gene Davis
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Gene Davis
Title: Zebra
Portfolio: Series II
Medium: Screenprint on canvas laminated to board
Date: 1969
Edition: 110/150
Frame Size: 30 1/2" x 36 1/2"
Sheet Size: 24" x 30 1...
Category
1960s Abstract Gene Davis More Prints
Materials
Canvas, Screen
Witch Doctor: abstract modern minimalist color field drawing with rainbow colors
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
Vibrant magenta, yellow, orange, brown, purple, lime green, jungle green, dark green, cerulean, and sky-blue lines take on the organic quality of handmade paper, resulting in this su...
Category
1970s Abstract Gene Davis More Prints
Materials
Lithograph
Homage to Barnett Newman
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
A very good impression of this color screenprint on white wove paper. Signed and numbered 248/250 in pencil by Davis. Based on a series of oil paintings made by Davis, completed afte...
Category
1970s Color-Field Gene Davis More Prints
Materials
Color, Screen
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A Paintings Retrospective: vintage LACMA Museum poster depicting her 1963 work
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“What concerns me when I work is not whether a picture is a landscape… or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is, did I make a beautiful picture?” - - Helen Frankenthaler
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Other examples of this edition are found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, MOCA Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum, the Philadelphia Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and numerous regional museums and institutions in the United States and worldwide.
Helen Frankenthaler, A Brief Biography
Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), whose career spanned six decades, has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstract painting, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. She produced a body of work whose impact on contemporary art has been profound and continues to grow.
Frankenthaler was born on December 12, 1928, and raised in New York City. She attended the Dalton School, where she received her earliest art instruction from Rufino Tamayo. In 1949 she graduated from Bennington College, Vermont, where she was a student of Paul Feeley. She later studied briefly with Hans Hofmann.
Frankenthaler’s professional exhibition career began in 1950, when Adolph Gottlieb selected her painting Beach (1950) for inclusion in the exhibition titled Fifteen Unknowns: Selected by Artists of the Kootz Gallery. Her first solo exhibition was presented in 1951, at New York’s Tibor de Nagy Gallery, and that year she was also included in the landmark exhibition 9th St. Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture.
In 1952 Frankenthaler created Mountains and Sea, a breakthrough painting of American abstraction for which she poured thinned paint directly onto raw, unprimed canvas laid on the studio floor, working from all sides to create floating fields of translucent color. Mountains and Sea was immediately influential for the artists who formed the Color Field school of painting, notable among them Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.
As early as 1959, Frankenthaler began to be a regular presence in major international exhibitions. She won first prize at the Premiere Biennale de Paris that year, and in 1966 she represented the United States in the 33rd Venice Biennale, alongside Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jules Olitski. She had her first major museum exhibition in 1960, at New York’s Jewish Museum, and her second, in 1969, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, followed by an international tour.
Frankenthaler experimented tirelessly throughout her long career. In addition to producing unique paintings on canvas and paper, she worked in a wide range of media, including ceramics, sculpture, tapestry, and especially printmaking. Hers was a significant voice in the mid-century “print renaissance” among American abstract painters, and she is particularly renowned for her woodcuts. She continued working productively through the opening years of this century.
Frankenthaler’s distinguished, prolific career has been the subject of numerous monographic museum exhibitions. The Jewish Museum and Whitney Museum shows were succeeded by a major retrospective initiated by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth that traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI (1989); and those devoted to works on paper and prints organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1993), among others.
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Previously Available Items
Royal Curtain
By Gene Davis
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Gene Davis
Title: Royal Curtain
Medium: Screenprint on Arches paper
Date: 1980
Edition: 185/250
Frame Size: 35" x 26 1/2"
Sheet Size: 29 3/4" x 21 3/4"
Signature: Hand signed...
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1980s Gene Davis More Prints
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Screen
Royal Curtain
By Gene Davis
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Gene Davis
Title: Royal Curtain
Medium: Screenprint on Arches paper
Date: 1980
Edition: 183/250
Frame Size: 35" x 26 1/2"
Sheet Size: 29 3/4" x 21 3/4"
Signature: Hand signed...
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1980s Gene Davis More Prints
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Royal Curtain
By Gene Davis
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Gene Davis
Title: Royal Curtain
Medium: Screenprint on Arches paper
Date: 1980
Edition: 181/250
Frame Size: 35" x 26 1/2"
Sheet Size: 29 3/4" x 21 3/4"
Signature: Signed and ...
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Royal Curtain
By Gene Davis
Located in Washington, DC
Artist: Gene Davis
Title: Royal Curtain
Medium: Screenprint on Arches paper
Date: 1980
Edition: 166/250
Frame Size: 35" x 26 1/2"
Sheet Size: 29 3/4" x 21 3/4"
Signature: Signed and ...
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1980s Gene Davis More Prints
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Screen
Home Run: abstract modern minimalist color field drawing with rainbow colors
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
Rainbow shades shine in this abstract, color field print. Vibrant red, yellow, orange, purple, and green lines take on the organic quality of handmade paper, resulting in this subtle...
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1970s Abstract Gene Davis More Prints
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Home Run: abstract modern minimalist color field drawing with rainbow colors
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
Rainbow shades shine in this abstract, color field print. Vibrant red, yellow, orange, purple, and green lines take on the organic quality of handmade paper, resulting in this subtle...
Category
1970s Abstract Gene Davis More Prints
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Lithograph
Home Run: abstract modern minimalist color field drawing with rainbow colors
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
Rainbow shades shine in this abstract, color field print. Vibrant red, yellow, orange, purple, and green lines take on the organic quality of handmade paper, resulting in this subtle...
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1970s Abstract Gene Davis More Prints
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Lithograph
Tightrope: abstract modern minimalist color field drawing with rainbow colors
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
Rainbow shades shine in delicate clusters of vertical lines, in this abstract, geometric lithograph. Vibrant yellow, green, magenta pink, blue and brown take on the organic quality o...
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1970s Abstract Gene Davis More Prints
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Jack in the Box Gene Davis color field 1960s multicolor abstract stripe print
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
Vertical stripes, the artist’s trademark, run perfectly even and parallel down the sheet in ultramarine, light blue, black, purple, lime green, yellow, orange, pink, and periwinkle. ...
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1960s Color-Field Gene Davis More Prints
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Canvas, Board, Screen
H 30 in W 20 in D 0.18 in
Witch Doctor: abstract modern minimalist color field drawing with rainbow colors
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Located in New York, NY
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Image: 18.25 x 10.25 in. / 51 x 26 cm.
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Gene Davis more prints for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Gene Davis more prints available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Gene Davis in lithograph, screen print, board and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the abstract style. Not every interior allows for large Gene Davis more prints, so small editions measuring 26 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Saul Steinberg, Lamar Briggs, and Antoni Clavé. Gene Davis more prints prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $960 and tops out at $5,000, while the average work can sell for $1,350.