Milton Avery: the late paintings

Abstract

Milton Avery's late paintings, created between 1947 and 1963, stand at the nexus of figurative modernism and Abstract Expressionism. Frequently viewed as the last of the great American figurative painters, Avery, as this book argues, provides a key to understanding the artists of the second half of the American century. This volume accompanies the first exhibition of Avery's art since the popular 1982 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art; it is the first book on Avery in over a decade. A 1958 essay by the seminal critic Clement Greenberg provides a valuable period context, while the new text by Robert Hobbs includes an insightful connection between Avery's painting and the lyrical modernism of Wallace Stevens's poetry, which will intrigue lovers of American poetry as well as American art. This book, and the exhibition that it accompanies, were organized by the American Federation of Arts.