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Lot Essay
Executed in 1953, Dieppe is a poetic study in bold abstraction, successfully balancing form and color in the artist's distinctive style. Milton Avery's mature abstractions from the mid-1940s and 50s exerted a critical influence on the works of several Post-War American painters, including Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, confirming Avery's position as one of the key American Colorists. Avery's use of color is perhaps the most characteristic feature of his work; more than one individual element of the composition, rather it was central to the work as a whole. Though Avery discounted any influence of French painter Henri Matisse, it is undeniable that Avery understood the way Matisse used simple broad shapes to create depth and why he preferred one flat color to the fussiness of blended shades.
"Matisse remained a major impetus behind this striking adoption of saturated, arbitrary color. Although Avery's awareness of Matisse's work had preceded his affiliation in 1935 with the Valentine Gallery, his new alliance with Matisse's American dealer revitalized his interest in an artist whose sensibilities were much like his own. Matisse had written earlier that 'Fauvism came into being because we suddenly wanted to abandon the imitation of the local colors of nature and sought by experimenting with pure color to obtain increasingly powerful--obviously instantaneous--effects, and also to achieve greater luminosity.' A similar desire impelled Avery, whose own commitment to color and to form reduction had been firmly established early in his career. . . . Essentially, Matisse's example gave Avery license to extend the concerns he was already pursuing. His color after 1940 became much bolder as he created the mood of a situation by discarding the constraints of naturalistic hues and favoring a saturated, non-naturalistic palette." (B. Haskell, Milton Avery, New York, 1982, p. 72)
Dieppe features Avery's distinctive and skilled color scheme paired with his use of a strong graphic pattern. A series of white row boats lie on the dark gray blue sand; the group at the right seems to indicate the presence of a pier just outside of our vision. In the background dark mountains rise at the edge of the deep blue lake. Avery demonstrates his skill as an abstract painter by successfully articulating the entire landscape using large areas of color in varying tones of grayish blue, and a sense of space is convincingly conveyed.
Of his mature works from this period, Barbara Haskell has written: "In general, developments in Avery's art had been gradual rather than abrupt, and it sometimes took over a decade for an aspect of his style to reach maturity. Now, however, change was sudden. The graphic detailing and brushy paint application that had dominated his work of the previous six years vanished. In their place were denser, more evenly modulated areas of flattened color contained within crisply delineated forms. . . . . Avery retained color as the primary vehicle of feeling and expression, but in his increased abstraction he achieved a greater parity between recognizable forms and abstract shapes. In effect Avery combined the non-associative color from his earlier work with the flattening of shape and homogenization of color developed in the early thirties. The mature Avery style was born." (Milton Avery, pp. 85-89)
This work will be included in Dr. Marla Price's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Milton Avery.
"Matisse remained a major impetus behind this striking adoption of saturated, arbitrary color. Although Avery's awareness of Matisse's work had preceded his affiliation in 1935 with the Valentine Gallery, his new alliance with Matisse's American dealer revitalized his interest in an artist whose sensibilities were much like his own. Matisse had written earlier that 'Fauvism came into being because we suddenly wanted to abandon the imitation of the local colors of nature and sought by experimenting with pure color to obtain increasingly powerful--obviously instantaneous--effects, and also to achieve greater luminosity.' A similar desire impelled Avery, whose own commitment to color and to form reduction had been firmly established early in his career. . . . Essentially, Matisse's example gave Avery license to extend the concerns he was already pursuing. His color after 1940 became much bolder as he created the mood of a situation by discarding the constraints of naturalistic hues and favoring a saturated, non-naturalistic palette." (B. Haskell, Milton Avery, New York, 1982, p. 72)
Dieppe features Avery's distinctive and skilled color scheme paired with his use of a strong graphic pattern. A series of white row boats lie on the dark gray blue sand; the group at the right seems to indicate the presence of a pier just outside of our vision. In the background dark mountains rise at the edge of the deep blue lake. Avery demonstrates his skill as an abstract painter by successfully articulating the entire landscape using large areas of color in varying tones of grayish blue, and a sense of space is convincingly conveyed.
Of his mature works from this period, Barbara Haskell has written: "In general, developments in Avery's art had been gradual rather than abrupt, and it sometimes took over a decade for an aspect of his style to reach maturity. Now, however, change was sudden. The graphic detailing and brushy paint application that had dominated his work of the previous six years vanished. In their place were denser, more evenly modulated areas of flattened color contained within crisply delineated forms. . . . . Avery retained color as the primary vehicle of feeling and expression, but in his increased abstraction he achieved a greater parity between recognizable forms and abstract shapes. In effect Avery combined the non-associative color from his earlier work with the flattening of shape and homogenization of color developed in the early thirties. The mature Avery style was born." (Milton Avery, pp. 85-89)
This work will be included in Dr. Marla Price's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Milton Avery.