Milton Avery

In the current issue of Surfer’s Journal (29.6) there is a profile of American abstract painter Milton Avery.

Avery loved to paint coastal scenes and this love carried him to many of the same places that surfers frequent.

In observing waves build and crash into random whitewater, Avery drew inspiration from the abstraction in nature and tried to capture it in his work.

Avery’s mildly-abstracted paintings were part of the momentum that led to more radically subtractive styles (completely non-depictive) which resulted in a uniquely American art movement with famous contributors like Mark Rothko and Josef Albers.

My favorite Avery painting is in the Princeton University Art Museum. It is called Red Umbrella (1945, oil on canvas). It depicts two tiny figures under a large umbrella, on the sand, next to a vast green sea.

Thanks for the profile Bolton Colburn!

See Red Umbrella in full color, here: https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/4579