Mountain and Lake

Painted in 1962, Mountain and Lake demonstrates Milton Avery’s distinctive approach to the dichotomy between representation and abstraction. This tactic crowned him not only as one of America’s greatest modernists but also inspired the world’s foremost post-war artists across the genres of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field and representational painting. Described as America’s greatest colorist, or simply put, the “American Fauve,” Avery continually simplified, reduced and pared down his still lifes, landscapes and portraits throughout his career. As exemplified by his powerfully immersive Mountain and Lake, Avery bordered on total abstraction in his later period, but never fully departing from his iconic vision of the natural world.

Avery fueled his artistic imagination with annual summer trips to destinations such as Woodstock, Gloucester, Vermont and importantly, Provincetown. Avery spent four successive summers in Provincetown between 1957-1960, and the scale of his work drastically increased as he began painting directly onto canvas rather than make preparatory sketches that were later finished in the studio. Mountain and Lake demonstrates the impressive scale and reductive painting method of his later works, with the same strong focus on color harmony and grounding in nature as celebrated throughout his career. According to art historian Robert Hobbs, Avery’s late landscapes such as Mountain and Lake act as “a subtle reminder that the real world has its own magic and sense of wonder if one approaches it directly, sensitively, and as unselfconsciously as a child” (R. Hobbs, Milton Avery, New York, 1990, p. 214).