Richard Pousette-Dart

The artist

Pousette-Dart Family

Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1995)

“I strive for the poetic, musical spirit of form through line. All of my work is an attempt to make a structure which stands up by the presence and significance of its own mystical meaning. It is a thing within itself, mirroring different things to different minds.”

- Richard Pousette-Dart

Richard Posuette-Dart is known as one of the integral founding members of the New York School of Abstract Expressionists. Pousette-Dart’s early career is characterized by motifs inspired by the totemic symbolism of African, Oceanic and Native American art. These visual influences were prominent throughout the duration of his career; his formal career in art was spurred by his involvement with Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century Gallery and his long-standing relationship with Betty Parsons Gallery. Pousette-Dart’s establishment as a noted Abstract Expressionist assisted in transferring the center of the Western art world to New York City, a role formerly filled by Paris. 

As the artist’s practice evolved into the 1960s, manifestations of geometric forms became a prominent motif in his work. These themes culminated in the artist series Hieroglyphs, Presences, and Radiances, which were first displayed at a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1963. By the Sea reflects Pousette-Dart’s continued intrigue with shape and form, with and emphasis on the isolation and highlighting of “significant form.”