Milton Avery (American, 1885-1965)
The beloved and primarily self-taught painter Milton Avery is known as a colorist who focused on depicting serene moods, harmony, rounded shapes, muted colors, and simplified, flat compositions. Many of his subjects were marine subjects or figures. A key modernist who influenced generations of later artists, he was never closely associated with specific movements. Born in Altmar, New York, he studied in Hartford at the Connecticut League of Art Students before moving to New York City in 1925. He married Sally Michael in 1926 and the couple was part of the exciting art scene in Manhattan where he became closely associated with key Modernists including Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, Marsden Hartley, and others.
Throughout his career he was represented by noted galleries Valentine Gallery, Paul Rosenfeld & Company, and later Grace Borgenicht. Two retrospectives of his work occurred while he was alive, organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art (1952) and The Whitney Museum of American Art (1960). His work is in most major museums collection nationwide and his record sale at auction was a canvas from 1945 (the same year of our example, Rocks and Sea and Family) titled The Letter, which sold at Sotheby’s in 2022 for over $6,000,000.
