Details

Provenance

Rudolph Galleries, Woodstock, New York Acquired by the present owner from the above, circa 1960 Catalogue Note Painted in 1960, Red Sofa exemplifies Milton Avery’s mature style, which emerged in the 1950s. While he had long been concerned with reducing figural and landscape elements into simplified forms, Avery pushed this tendency even further during this period, omitting all components and details he found unnecessary. Avery explained this mounting impulse by saying, “I always take something out of my pictures. I strip the design to essentials; the facts do not interest me as much as the essence of nature” (as cited in Chris Ritter, “A Milton Avery Profile," Art Digest , vol. 27, December 1, 1952, p. 28). As he continued to distill the abstract qualities of representational forms, Avery also revised his consideration and application of color. In 1949, Avery began to experiment with monotype, a technical form of printmaking, while staying at the Research Art Colony in Maitland, Florida. Inspired by his extensive work with monotype and the sponging of wet, heavily diluted paint onto plate glass that the process required, Avery began to layer pigment in washes on his canvases, creating large and chromatically nuanced areas of color. While Red Sofa displays the vibrant palette of contrasting hues that characterizes Avery’s work from the 1940s, its dramatically reduced forms and structure foreshadow the large ambient fields of color Avery would continue to explore and intensify through the remainder of his career. While he was never interested in taking his paintings beyond representation, his work had a distinct impact on painters like Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, who pushed Avery’s ideas on the expressive power and structural function of color fully into abstraction. “[Avery] was, without question, our greatest colorist,” explains Hilton Kramer of the artist’s importance. “Nothing that has occurred in the entire development of Color Field Abstraction can be said to rival or surpass the invention and virtuosity he lavished upon the pictorial uses of color” (“Art View: Avery–Our Greatest Colorist,” The New York Times , April 12, 1981).

Catalog summary

Milton Avery Red Sofa signed Milton Avery and dated 1960 (lower left); also signed, titled and dated " Red Sofa"/by/Milton Avery/40 x 30/1960 on the reverse oil on canvas 40 by 30 inches (101.6 by 76.2 cm) Provenance Rudolph Galleries, Woodstock, New York Acquired by the present owner from the above, circa 1960 Catalogue Note Painted in 1960, Red Sofa exemplifies Milton Avery’s mature style, which emerged in the 1950s. While he had long been concerned with reducing figural and landscape elements into simplified forms, Avery pushed this tendency even further during this period, omitting all components and details he found unnecessary. Avery explained this mounting impulse by saying, “I always take something out of my pictures. I strip the design to essentials; the facts do not interest me as much as the essence of nature” (as cited in Chris Ritter, “A Milton Avery Profile," Art Digest , vol. 27, December 1, 1952, p. 28). As he continued to distill the abstract qualities of representational forms, Avery also revised his consideration and application of color. In 1949, Avery began to experiment with monotype, a technical form of printmaking, while staying at the Research Art Colony in Maitland, Florida. Inspired by his extensive work with monotype and the sponging of wet, heavily diluted paint onto plate glass that the process required, Avery began to layer pigment in washes on his canvases, creating large and chromatically nuanced areas of color. While Red Sofa displays the vibrant palette of contrasting hues that characterizes Avery’s work from the 1940s, its dramatically reduced forms and structure foreshadow the large ambient fields of color Avery would continue to explore and intensify through the remainder of his career. While he was never interested in taking his paintings beyond representation, his work had a distinct impact on painters like Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, who pushed Avery’s ideas on the expressive power and structural function of color fully into abstraction. “[Avery] was, without question, our greatest colorist,” explains Hilton Kramer of the artist’s importance. “Nothing that has occurred in the entire development of Color Field Abstraction can be said to rival or surpass the invention and virtuosity he lavished upon the pictorial uses of color” (“Art View: Avery–Our Greatest Colorist,” The New York Times , April 12, 1981).