Milton Avery Landscape Prints

The present work is a poster from the 1985 Milton Avery exhibition at the David Barnett Gallery, Milwaukee. The poster (as did the catalogue of the exhibition) features the work "Flight," an oil from 1950 that was a centerpiece of the exhibition. In the image, a teal sea is seen in the background, in the foreground is a grey and blue ground. Two birds sit on this ground, a bird with a pink wing sits looking towards the left. A yellow bird is further to the right, but also looks towards the left. The most eye catching bird has begun to fly towards the scene, placed immediately in the center of the composition. Birds such as these were a common motif in Avery's painting and printmaking and he often featured them in his abstracting images of the sea. This poster has been cut down to the image. Unframed and uncut posters are available. Contact us for more information. 28 x 36 inches, image 30.5 x 40.5 inches, frame Framed to conservation standards using archival materials including 100 percent rag matting and UV Clear glass to inhibit UV damage. Housed in a modern-profile red/cabernet-stain finish wood moulding. Overall good condition; some minor wear to frame; poster cut to image Milton Avery (March 7, 1885 – January 3, 1965) was an American modern painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City. Avery was a man of few words. "Why talk when you can paint?" he often quipped to his wife. Their daughter, March Avery...

"Flight" is a poster from the David Barnett Gallery's show on Milton Avery. A teal sea is seen in the background, in the foreground is a grey and blue ground. Two birds sit on this ground, a bird with a pink wing sits looking towards the left. A yellow bird is further to the right, but also looks towards the left. The most eye catching bird has begun to fly towards the scene, he is in the middle of the piece. Image: 23.75 x 34.5 in Framed: 31.375 x 42 in An American Modern Painter The son of a tanner, Avery began working at a local factory at the age of 16, and supported himself for decades with a succession of blue-collar jobs. The death of his brother-in-law in 1915 left Avery, as the sole remaining adult male in his household, responsible for the support of nine female relatives. His interest in art led him to attend classes at the Connecticut League of Art Students in Hartford, and over a period of years he painted in obscurity while receiving a conservative art education. In 1917 he began working night jobs in order to paint in the daytime. In 1924 he met Sally Michel, a young art student, and in 1926 they married; her income as an illustrator enabled him to devote himself more fully to painting. For several years in the late 1920s through the late 1930s Avery practiced painting and drawing at the Art Students League of New York. Roy Neuberger saw his work and thought he deserved recognition. Determined to get the world to know and respect Avery's work, Neuberger bought over 100 of his paintings, starting with Gaspé Landscape, and lent or donated them to museums all over the world. With the work of Milton Avery rotating through high-profile museums, he came to be a highly respected and successful painter. Avery's work is seminal to American abstract painting while his work is clearly representational, it focuses on color relations and is not concerned with creating the illusion of depth as most conventional Western painting since the Renaissance has. Avery was often thought of as an American Matisse, especially because of his colorful and innovative landscape paintings. His poetic, bold and creative use of drawing and color set him apart from more conventional painting of his era. Early in his career his work was considered too radical for being too abstract; when Abstract Expressionism became dominant his work was overlooked, as being too representational. In the 1930s he was befriended by Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko among many other artists living in New York City in the 1930s-40s. The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. was the first museum to purchase one of Avery's paintings in 1929; that museum also gave him his first solo museum exhibition in 1944. Avery was a man of few words. "Why talk when you can paint?" he often quipped to his wife. Their daughter, March Avery...