Effulgent in their gorgeous, low-toned palette of greys, mauves, greens and a whole range of pinks that are Avery’s trademark, these late paintings appear modest and even simple – the shapes flattened and nearly blunt, but balanced in the most elegant compositions. A boat on the Thames is described in two bars of pale pink and mint green glowing out of a voluminous black river. The same pink becomes a morning sky in which two numinous oblongs of silver and grey float above a still-dark blue world (Rothko and the abstract expressionists learned from Avery).
Image: Milton Avery, Morning Sky, 1962
Oil on canvas
81.3 x 121.9 cm
32 x 48 in
© The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation
Courtesy The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation and Victoria Miro, London
June 4 2017
