Thomas Downing

Estate of Alice Denney, Washington D.C.

Claudine Humblet, The New American Abstraction, 1950–1970, vol. 2, Milan 2007, p. 867, illustrated

"(Tom) was one of the first persons that...let me know that the Washington Color School painting wasn't about what was being written by Greenberg...Tom would interestingly tell you that it was only about seeing; and then later he would tell you that it was only about color; or that it was only about the music of color; or the way you could structure color. And then later he would say that it was like pop art."

-Sam Gilliam, quoted in Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, (and traveling), Sam Gilliam: A Retrospective, 2005, p. 15