Neuberger Museum of Art

Purchase, New York

(914) 251-6100



 

Milton Avery at Neuberger Museum of Art

 

Following a national tour, twenty-eight paintings from the Neuberger Museum of Art's Permanent Collection by internationally recognized American artist Milton Avery will be on view in the Museum through April 23, 2000. Both figurative and landscape paintings are presented in this exhibition, which documents Avery's artistic development and spans the years 1929 - 1961. (left: Cello Player in Blue, 1944, oil on canvas, 36 x 26 inches, Collection of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Gift of Roy R. Neuberger, photo: Jim Frank)

Milton Avery brought together simple, spare forms and harmonious colors to build patterns of flat, interlocking shapes reminiscent of French artist Henri Matisse. He frequently depicted family, friends and the familiar landscapes, simplifying and refining the imagery into strong formal patterns. (right: The Group (After Dinner Coffee), 1939, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches, Collection of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Gift of Roy R. Neuberger, photo: Jim Frank)

Avery came of age as an artist in the 1920s, when the country's experiments with non-objective form and color was largely abandoned in favor of a more representational style. He influenced a new generation of other notable American painters including Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman.

Roy Neuberger, the Museum's founding patron, first encountered the artist's work in 1940. He was attracted to Avery's nuances of color as well as the formal qualities of his work and his distinct American sensibility, which manifested itself in his humor and wit. Convinced of his significance, Neuberger acquired more than one hundred Avery paintings within a short period of time, making his the largest personal collection of the artist's work. (left: Waterfall, 1954, oil on canvas, 32 x 52 inches, Collection of the Neuberger Museum of Art)

 

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Read more about the Neuberger Museum of Art in Resource Library Magazine

For further biographical information on selected artists cited above please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

rev. 12/23/10


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