Milton Avery drew directly from the human figure throughout his career and, beginning in the 1930s, was a member of an informal sketch group that also included Rothko and Gottlieb. Avery’s figure paintings of the early 1940s reveal the continuing evolution of his mature figure style as he experimented with various techniques in the rendering of the figure itself and incorporated heightened colour. Girl in Green, 1940, underlines Avery’s growing embrace of modernism as he continued to mature as a colourist and to simplify his pictorial compositions into arrangements of flat shapes in contrasting colours and tones.

In some respects his work of the 1940s is at its point of closest relationship with that of Matisse. Girl in Green certainly possesses a monumentality, accentuated by its palette and proportions, that suggests the influence of Matisse’s paintings of monumental nudes, and indeed his sculptural figures.

During this period, Avery began to enjoy a wider renown and growing commercial success. In 1943 he had his first solo exhibition at Paul Rosenberg Gallery, and in 1944 his first museum exhibition opened at the Phillips Memorial Gallery, Washington, DC.

About the artist

One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Milton Avery (1885–1965) is celebrated for his luminous paintings of landscapes, figures and still lifes, which balance distillation of form with free, vigorous brushwork and lyrical colour.

Avery’s work is represented in major museums and private collections worldwide including the Art Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; LACMA; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts Boston; MoMA; National Gallery of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Phillips Collection; SFMOMA; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Tate; Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in collaboration with the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, a major retrospective of Avery’s work commences at The Modern, Fort Worth this autumn (7 November 2021–30 January 2022), travelling to the Wadsworth Atheneum (24 February–5 June 2022) and the Royal Academy of Arts (15 July–16 October 2022). Currently on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum (until 17 October 2021), Milton Avery: The Connecticut Years presents an intimate look at the formative years of the modernist master.