Milton Avery "Selected Works"
Fischbach Gallery
This event has ended.
“Avery is first a great poet. 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. This --- alone --- took great courage in a generation which felt that it could be heard only through clamor, force and a show of power. But Avery had that inner power in which gentleness and silence proved more audible and poignant. 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 gifted with magical means, by those born to sing….” So said the artist Mark Rothko in a memorial address delivered at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on January 7, 1965. There will be an opening reception Thursday, February 16 from 5 to 7PM.
The Fischbach Gallery will open a show of selected works by Milton Avery. One of the featured works is a large oil painting, “From the Studio”, 1954, oil on canvas, 58” x 42”. This important painting was shown at the Whitney Museum in 1955 just a year after Avery painted it. Later the painting was included in the Avery retrospective that the Whitney organized in 1960. A related painting, “Window Plants”, 1955, painted just a year later than “From the Studio” provides another glimpse of the artist’s investigation of color, geometry, and space. Also included in the exhibition is a selection of rarely seen woodcuts and drypoint prints created by the artist in the 1930’s and the 1950’s. Several beautifully fresh crayon drawings and watercolors show the artist’s mastery of these mediums. “Coastal View”, a watercolor from the 1920’s, is an early example of Avery’s fascination with the colors and luminosity of the sea.
Two impressive large sheet oil on paper landscapes, painted in Lake Hill, New York during the summers of 1962 and 1963 are representative of the works Avery produced during the last of his summer painting excursions. These late works are in many ways a summation of Avery’s remarkable accomplishments.
The exhibition was curated by McWillie Chambers. Chambers can claim a 38 year close association with the works of Milton Avery. He worked for 23 years at the Grace Borgenicht Gallery, the gallery of record for Avery’s works until 1995. McWillie Chambers is an artist, a curator, as well as an art dealer specializing in the works of Avery and other American and European modern masters.
Media
Schedule
from February 16, 2012 to March 17, 2012