The Royal Academy of Arts announces its 2022 programme, featuring the major exhibition Milton Avery: American Colourist

The first comprehensive survey of Avery’s work in Europe, the exhibition (which will now take place 16 July–16 October 2022) brings together a selection of around 70 paintings from the 1930s–1960s that are among his most celebrated. These works typically feature scenes of daily life, including portraits of loved ones and serene landscapes from his visits to Maine and Cape Cod.

Milton Avery (1885-1965) has long been recognised in the United States as one of the most important and influential twentieth-century American artists. Avery’s compositions, taken from daily life, including portraits and landscapes, are imbued with a colour sensibility, harmony and balance which was to have a major influence on the next artistic generation. Avery played a vital role in the development of Abstract Expressionism, through his close association with some of the younger exponents of the movement, such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Adolph Gottlieb. His work defies distinct categorisation, falling between the time of the American Impressionists and the Abstract Expressionists, both of which had a significant impact on his oeuvre. Avery was famously prolific, and this survey will feature a careful selection of around seventy of his most celebrated paintings from the early 1930s to the 1960s. The last retrospective of his work was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1982 and this will be the first solo exhibition of Milton Avery in Europe.

The exhibition is organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in collaboration with The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

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Image: Milton Avery, Boathouse by the Sea, 1959