Art Appreciation
American painter Milton Avery was born in Altmar, New York on March 7, 1885. He is often associated with the American Modernist movement and known for the unique approach to color and form.
From a young age, he supported himself working blue-collar jobs. His interest in art led him to attend classes at the Connecticut League of Art Students in Hartford. There he studied at the Art Students League under the guidance of the American Impressionist Charles Webster Hawthorne.
He then moved to New York in the late 1920s and practiced painting and drawing at the Art Students League. There he met Sally Michel, a young art student, and they both married in 1926. Both would develop a "lyrical, collaborative style" art historian Robert Hobbs called "the Avery style."
Avery's early work in the 1930s was similar to those of German expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. By the 1940s, his style became more like to that of Henri Matisse.
Avery's work was influential in the development of Abstract Expressionism, a movement that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s. Artists such as Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb were inspired by Avery's use of color and form, and his work had a lasting impact on the American art world.
Avery initially struggled to make a living as an artist, until art patron Roy Rothschild Neuberger bought over 100 Avery paintings and loan or donated them to museums. Avery soon became a highly respected and successful painter.
His work, which often featured large, simplified shapes and vibrant colors, sometimes dreamlike, convey emotion and sensation.
Gaspé Landscape (c. 1940)
Sally Avery with Still Life (1926)
Blue Nude (1947)
Sources:
Wikipedia
https://www.wikiart.org/
