Biography
Milton Avery’s career extended from the 1930s until the early 1960s, and during that time he created a highly distinctive style founded on many of the premises of modern French art, those of Matisse in particular, and on the rich tradition of American folk art. He lived and worked in America and became an important artistic mentor for a new generation of painters such as Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, who, as Rothko later affirmed, were younger, questioning, and looking for an anchor.
Avery’s restraint and economy of means introduced the future abstract expressionists to the idea of laying on paint in a way that drew attention to the richness of the medium rather than to the brushwork. As the painter Hans Hofmann pointed out, Avery was one of the first of the American artists to relate colours in a plastic way, and in doing so exerted a strong influence on the way Rothko and Newman found their own ways of making colour evoke the sublime. I am not seeking pure abstraction, Avery wrote in 1951, rather the purity and essence of the idea expressed in its simplest form.
Avery’s works on paper are among the most serene expressions of his search for the essence of an idea, revealing what David Anfam, in his catalogue essay, calls a long-pondered pictorial synthesis mapping the regions between subjective feeling and empirical observation. The oils on paper were begun in 1960 when Avery was recovering from his second heart attack and was forced to restrict his physical activities to leisurely strolls along the lakeside at Woodstock where he was spending the summer months. The empathy between the artist and nature is at its most striking in these works which, as Anfam points out, play on and renew the venerable tradition of the pastoral in landscape painting. In his funeral oration, delivered four days after Avery’s death in January 1965, Rothko paid tribute to his friend’s natural lyrical gift: His is the poetry of sheer loveliness, of sheer beauty. Thanks to him this kind of poetry has been able to survive in our time. From the beginning there was nothing tentative about Avery. He always had that naturalness, that exactness and that inevitable completeness which can be achieved only by those born to sing.
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Milton Avery, Blue Bull, 1963
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Milton Avery, The Black Cow, 1963
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Milton Avery, Dock and Fishing Boats, 1957
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Milton Avery, Wavey Dunes, 1958
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Milton Avery, Gray Mountain, Black Cow, 1963
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Milton Avery, Summer Grazers, 1963
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Milton Avery, Frozen Lake, 1963
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Milton Avery, Trees in Bloom, 1963
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Milton Avery, Beside the Pool, 1963
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Milton Avery, Outdoor Reader, 1963
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Milton Avery, Landscape with Strange Animal, 1963
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Milton Avery, Peacocks, 1963
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Milton Avery, Five Trees, 1953 Watercolour on paper 30 x 22 in / 76.2 x 55.9 cm
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Milton Avery, Towering Fir, 1953 Watercolour on paper 30 x 22 in / 76.2 x 55.9 cm
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Milton Avery, Black Hills, 1954 Mixed media on paper 9 x 23 3/4 in / 22.9 x 60.3 cm
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Milton Avery, Spring Field, 1954 Mixed media on paper (double-sided) 10 x 22 in / 25.4 x 55.9 cm
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Milton Avery, Red Hill, 1954 Oil crayon on paper (double-sided) 18 x 24 in / 45.7 x 61 cm
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Milton Avery, Spreading Tree, 1954 Oil crayon on paper 22 x 30 in / 55.9 x 76.2 cm
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Milton Avery, Early Spring, 1954 Oil crayon on paper 18 x 24 in / 45.7 x 61 cm
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Milton Avery, Bird House, 1955
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Milton Avery, Something about a Tree, 1955
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Milton Avery, Diver, 1957
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Milton Avery, Grazers by Dark Sea, 1938
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Milton Avery, Blue Eyes ("Littel Girl"), 1938
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Milton Avery, Country Road, c.1939
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Milton Avery, Young Artist, 1941 Gouache on paper 30 x 22 in / 76.2 x 55.9 cm
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Milton Avery, Moored Boat, 1948 Watercolour on paper 22 x 30 in / 55.9 x 76.2 cm
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Milton Avery, Brahmin Bull, 1950 Monoprint, gouache and pencil on paper 15 x 22 1/2 in / 38.1 x 57.1 cm
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Milton Avery, Blue Tree, 1953 Watercolour on paper 11 1/2 x 24 in / 29.5 x 61 cm
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Milton Avery, Safe Harbor, 1938 Watercolour on paper laid on card 22 x 30 in / 55.9 x 76.2 cm