Milton Avery

American, 1885 - 1965

BiographyMilton Avery was born to a working-class family in Sand Bank, New York in 1885. A few years later, the family moved to Connecticut. During his teenage years, Avery worked for a local factory to support his family. His involvement with artmaking began when he took a sign lettering class at the Connecticut League of Art Students at age 20. Recognizing his potential, he was persuaded to take life-drawing classes instead.

Avery pursued educational opportunities and held a number of teaching positions, even as he continued working additional jobs to support himself. He transferred to the School of the Art Society in Hartford beginning in 1918, became a member of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts in 1924, and attended classes at the Art Students League in 1926-1938. 1938 also marked his work with the WPA Federal Arts project.

Early in his artistic career, Avery befriended Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Adolph Gottlieb while taking art classes in New York City. The men would later become frequent guests at his home, where he lived and worked, along with his wife the painter Sally Michel and eventually their daughter, the artist March Avery. His move to New Jersey, which brought him in proximity to New York City, also brought him to galleries that exhibited Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and other important artists like Joan Miro, Georges Braque, and Wassily Kandinsky. Trips to Mexico and Europe and frequent visits to coastal cities like Provincetown and Gloucester inspired him to experiment with different subjects and techniques. A debilitating heart attack at the end of the 1940s shaped his practice later in life. These events contributed to the strong sense of shape and removal of extraneous detail exemplified by works like Artist and Model.

Avery went through periods of both obscurity and critical celebration during his life. Before his death in 1965, he was the subject of a fullscale retrospective at the Baltimore Museum of Art which traveled to other museums on the East Coast. His work was exhibited in multiple galleries and museums. This trend continued after his death at the age of 67, with retrospectives and major exhibitions held in 1982 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and 2001 and 2002 at the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Norton Museum of Art.

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