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 Milton Avery

"Three Birds"

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(1953)

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"Three Birds", (1952), color woodcut printed in yellow and black on Japan paper, full margins, 245x635mm; 9 5/8" x 25".  Signed, dated and numbered 13/20 in pencil, lower margin.  A superb impression [Lunn 43].

Milton Avery (1885-1965) was born in Sand Bank, New York, a small town near Lake Ontario.  Although he studied art, he was largely self-taught, and, while not distinctively avant-garde, nevertheless contributed to the powerful surge of American art after World War II.  Somewhat isolated from developments around him, Avery nonetheless was one of the few American masters of figure painting during the 1930s and 1940s.  His work was acclaimed during the 1940s, but later overshadowed by the Abstract Expressionists and Pop and Minimalist artists.  Avery characteristically worked in broad, simplified planes of color derived from Matisse.  In his later years he focused more on landscape and nature and became more abstract in organization exploring the abstract and expressive possibilities in color.

Avery was one of the artists whose plates were printed at Stanley Hayter's Atelier 17.  His flat, colorful style had much in common with Matisse's.  His bold rudimentary forms, often willfully distorted, also recall Matisse.  Barbara Haskell, Avery's biographer, writes that "the development of color harmonies came to dominate Avery's art; regardless of the structural and technical phases which his painting evolved, his maturation as a colorist proceeded autonomously and with interruption".  His drypoints, woodcuts and monotypes are among the most refreshing American prints of the late 40s and 50s.  it was during the 50s that the revival of woodcut and wood-engraving by American printmakers arose; and here in the "Three Birds", Avery's bold simplicity and genius is revealed to its fullest.

Milton Avery's "Three Birds" is in a 25" x 40 3/4" bundled reeds styled frame on black and gray with wood tones showing through.  The outer Vermeer black, middle 8-ply black rag and inner black on yellow core mats are acid and lignin free and are protected with Acrylite-AR OP3 (UV) by CYRO .... $6800.00

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