Milton Avery

Private Collection, New York

Thence by descent to the present owner

Milton Avery and his family left New York every summer for a change of scenery in search of inspiration from natural forms. The family first visited Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1957, the year of execution of Yellow Grasses. In Provincetown, they were often joined by other artists such as Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, who both influenced Avery’s technique. Throughout these Massachusetts summers, Avery began using thinned out oil paints close to the viscosity of watercolors, which gave forms softer edges and colors a sense of translucency - contrasting with his previous thick opaque canvases. Avery said that he liked to “seize the one sharp instant in nature, to imprison it by means of ordered shapes and space relationships. To this end I eliminate and simplify, leaving apparently nothing but color and pattern. I am not seeking pure abstraction; rather the purity and essence of the idea – expressed in its simplest form” (quoted in Robert Hobbs, Milton Avery, New York, 1990, p. 158). 

Yellow Grasses perfectly exemplifies Avery's late '50’s landscapes and his mature artistic style, which had become more simplified in its emphasis on creative colors, lyrical movement and a horizontal linear plane. His changing style is shown in the present work through the slightly curved plane of textured grass made from various shades of intertwining yellows as well as the light brown flat color depicting the receding field. The dimension is completed with a clear horizontal barrier between the yellow grass portion and the horizon line. The light pattern sketched into the grass creates a sense of movement on an otherwise linear and flat composition.