Milton Avery

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Now through January 30, 2022

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Conn.

March 5 to June 5, 2022

London's Royal Academy 

July 15 to October 16, 2022

Milton Avery, Two Figures on Beach, 1950. Oil on canvas. 76.2 x 101.6 cm. © 2021 Milton Avery Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London 2021. Photo: Sotheby's.

Milton Avery, Little Fox River, 1942. Oil on canvas. 91.8 x 122.2 cm. Collection Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York. Gift of Roy R. Neuberger © 2021 Milton Avery Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London 2021. Photo: Jim Frank.

Milton Avery, Self-Portrait, 1941. Oil on canvas. 137.2 x 86.4 cm. Collection Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York. Gift from the Estate of Roy R. Neuberger © 2021 Milton Avery Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London 2021. Photo: Jim Frank.

Milton Avery, Boathouse by the Sea, 1959. Oil on canvas. 182.9 x 152.4 cm. Milton Avery Trust © 2021 Milton Avery Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London 2021. Courtesy Victoria Miro and Waqas Wajahat.

Now on view (through January 30, 2022) at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas, a traveling survey of American master Milton Avery showcases some of his finest works, dating from the 1910s to the mid-1960s. From abstractions to scenes of daily life, celebrated paintings also include Avery's portraits of loved ones and serene landscapes from his visits to Maine and Cape Cod.

Milton Avery (1885-1965) has long been recognized as one of the most important and influential twentieth-century American artists. His compositions are imbued with a color sensibility, harmony and balance which was to have a major influence on the next artistic generation.

The exhibition traces Avery's career, starting with works up to the early 1940s, showing the influence of American Impressionists and the role of landscape in his work. The second half of the exhibit spotlights works from the mid-1940s on, with paintings from the 1950s through to the early 1960s, revealing the impact of modernists such as Henri Matisse, and increasingly abstracted compositions.

“I have long been fascinated by Milton Avery’s remarkable work and the significant role he played in the development of American art in the 20th century,” says exhibition curator Edith Devaney of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. “This is a timely moment to celebrate his considerable achievement and continued influence.”

Avery played a vital role in the development of Abstract Expressionism, through his close association with some of the younger exponents of the movement, such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Adolph Gottlieb. His work defies distinct categorization, falling between the time of the American Impressionists and the Abstract Expressionists, both of which had a significant impact on his oeuvre.

Avery was famously prolific, and this survey features a careful selection of around seventy of his most celebrated paintings from the early 1930s to the 1960s. The last retrospective of his work was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1982 and this will be the first solo exhibition of Milton Avery in Europe.

The exhibition is organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in collaboration with The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. After its debut in Fort Worth, the exhibit is on view at the Wadsworth in Hartford, Conn., from March 5 to June 5, 2022, and London's Royal Academy from July 15 to October 16, 2022.