Milton Avery: Early Works on Paper and Late Paintings

This exhibition catalogue juxtaposes Milton Avery’s early works on paper from the 1930s with his masterful late paintings, tracing the full trajectory of his artistic evolution. Through meticulous analysis of seventy pivotal works, the publication demonstrates how Avery’s sophisticated negotiation between representation and abstraction established new paradigms for American modernism. The volume traces how Avery’s early watercolors and gouaches of working-class leisure prefigured the radical spatial compressions and tonal modulations of his late seascapes, which would prove instrumental in the development of Color Field painting through their influence on younger artists like Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. Avery's unique synthesis of European modernist innovations with an American pictorial vocabulary established him as a crucial bridge figure between figurative tradition and postwar abstraction.

Published by Yares Art, New York, 2018

Essays by Eliza Rathbone, William C. Agee, and David Ebony

Designed by Tim Laun and Natalie Wedeking

Softcover, fully illustrated, 102 pages

_{Artworks © Milton Avery Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY}