Milton Avery & The End of Modernism January 22, 2011

Milton Avery & the End of Modernism looks at work by the artist who brought the sketch, with its spontaneity, movement and fleetingness, to the status of a finished painting. The exhibition features Avery’s intense saturated color fields, the simplification of form, and figures that emphasize the flatness of canvas surface. This exhibition examines the contributions of Milton Avery as a significant figurative painter from the late 1920s through the early 1960s and places Avery’s work within a long history of modernist practice that recognizes the artist’s sketch as a finished work. Within the emergence of his avant-garde style, Avery can be seen as one of the preeminent American painters of his time, exerting great influence among both his contemporaries and subsequent generations of artists. Milton Avery & the End of Modernism is organized for NCMA by Museum Director Karl E. Willers, Ph.D.