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Lot Essay
A central element of Milton Avery's art is his ability to modernize a familiar domestic scene. His subjects, whether people or objects, are transformed by Avery into lyrical compositions of pattern and form, unified by his brilliant use of color, to create a cohesive whole. Refining this approach to his art, Avery produced oils and watercolors for over three decades. "Throughout the thirty-five years of Avery's mature career," writes one art historian, "from 1930 to 1965--his work was largely divided between quiet, contemplative scenes of the natural world and depictions of family and friends playing games, making music, painting, reading, and relaxing at the beach. Regarding Avery's consistent focus on these familiar subjects, Hilton Kramer wrote: 'His wit preserves their freshness, while his elegance confers on them a kind of lyric beauty one normally expects to find in a subject encountered for the first time.' " (B. L. Grad, Milton Avery, Royal Oak, Michigan, 1981, p. 1)
The forties proved to be a pivotal decade for Avery's art, one in which he perfected his distinct and signature modernist style. Painted in 1949, Interior with Figure captures the lyrical essence of the best of these works. In it he paints a figure seated on a couch in an interior which has been tranformed into a richly-colored scene. He has chosen a warm palette of red, pink, purple and peach, complimented with vivid highlights of blue, and enlivened with pattern and texture. "As the forties advanced," writes Barbara Haskell, "Avery's concentration on color and the simplification of shapes became increasingly intense. As before, color created the dominant impression and set the emotional tone, but now Avery's choices of colors and their combination became more striking and daring. Multiple layers of pigment were blended together into evenly toned areas marked by Avery's unmistakable color sense. Within these barely modulated color planes Avery created textures by scratching into the painting with a fork or razor, a process which reduced illusionistic recession by calling attention to the two-dimensional surface of the canvas." (Milton Avery, p. 108)
Just two years after completing Interior with Figure, Avery summarized the balance he sought to achieve between his subject and his technique. "I work on two levels," he wrote. "I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colors, form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter. At the same time I try to capture and translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea." (as quoted in B. Haskell, Milton Avery, New York, 1982, p. 156). With Interior with Figure, Avery develops this delicate tension between the depiction of his subject with a recognizable element of realism, and his forceful, vivid style tending toward abstraction. He also adds a playful element by including, in the foreground, a toy truck painted a brilliant red.
This work will be included in Dr. Marla Price's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Milton Avery.
The forties proved to be a pivotal decade for Avery's art, one in which he perfected his distinct and signature modernist style. Painted in 1949, Interior with Figure captures the lyrical essence of the best of these works. In it he paints a figure seated on a couch in an interior which has been tranformed into a richly-colored scene. He has chosen a warm palette of red, pink, purple and peach, complimented with vivid highlights of blue, and enlivened with pattern and texture. "As the forties advanced," writes Barbara Haskell, "Avery's concentration on color and the simplification of shapes became increasingly intense. As before, color created the dominant impression and set the emotional tone, but now Avery's choices of colors and their combination became more striking and daring. Multiple layers of pigment were blended together into evenly toned areas marked by Avery's unmistakable color sense. Within these barely modulated color planes Avery created textures by scratching into the painting with a fork or razor, a process which reduced illusionistic recession by calling attention to the two-dimensional surface of the canvas." (Milton Avery, p. 108)
Just two years after completing Interior with Figure, Avery summarized the balance he sought to achieve between his subject and his technique. "I work on two levels," he wrote. "I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colors, form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter. At the same time I try to capture and translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea." (as quoted in B. Haskell, Milton Avery, New York, 1982, p. 156). With Interior with Figure, Avery develops this delicate tension between the depiction of his subject with a recognizable element of realism, and his forceful, vivid style tending toward abstraction. He also adds a playful element by including, in the foreground, a toy truck painted a brilliant red.
This work will be included in Dr. Marla Price's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Milton Avery.