Milton Avery 1885 - 1965

Estate of Meyer Pearlman (sold: Sotheby Parke-Bernet, April 8, 1971, lot 63, illustrated)
Charles Michaels (acquired at the above sale)
Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York, 1977
Albert A. Robin, by 1991 (acquired from the above)
Gift to the present owner from the above, 2004

New York, Grace Borgenicht Gallery, The Nude: Milton Avery and The European Masters, February 1977, illustrated 
Scottsdale, Arizona, Yares Gallery, Milton Avery: Paintings and Drawings 1930-1963, February 1980, no. 2, illustrated

Carter Ratliff, "Remarks on the Nude," Art International, vol. 21, no. 2, March-April 1977, pp. 64-65, illustrated
Robert Hobbs, Milton Avery, New York, 1990, p. 174, illustrated in color

In Lanky Nude, Milton Avery reinvents the traditional subject of the female figure in repose through his distinctive, thoroughly modern vision. This mature, semi-abstracted style emerged in the 1940s, soon after the artist left Valentine Dudensing to join Paul Rosenberg at his illustrious New York Gallery. Encouraged by Rosenberg, Avery intensified his earlier experiments with the application of non-associative color and simplification of form. While he continued to work representationally, Avery abandoned many conventional pictorial devices and instead employed color to indicate depth and space.

In the 1950s, Avery pushed these visual explorations further, omitting nearly all extraneous detail from his work.  In Lanky Nude he reduces the central aspects of the scene to their essential forms, translating each compositional element as a single color set within a compressed picture plane. Rendering his subject through a two-dimensional design, Avery masterfully transforms the figure and her environment into a simplified and evocative arrangement of shape and color, melding representation and abstraction.