DAVIS, GENE (1920-1985)

"Series 1: Graf Zeppelin" (1968)
limited edition silkscreen, ed. 137/150
76.5 x 51cm (unframed)
unsigned
*private collection, Sydney
 
Davis was a leading American Colour Field Abstract Artist. He was a major figure in 20th-century American painting whose contribution was invaluable in establishing Washington, D.C. as a center of contemporary art. Davis also played a significant national & international role in the color abstraction movement that first achieved prominence in the 1960s. He worked as a sportswriter and White House correspondent before pursuing a career in art. Although never formally trained, Davis educated himself through assiduous visits to New York's museums and galleries as well as to Washington's art institutions, especially the Phillips Collection. His early paintings & drawings though they show the influence of such artists as the Swiss painter Paul Klee & the American abstractionist Arshile Gorky display a distinct improvisational quality. This same preference for spontaneity characterizes Davis's selection of color in his later stripe paintings. Davis is known primarily for the stripe works that span twenty-seven years. In the 1960s, art critics identified Davis as a leader of the Washington Color School with Kenneth Noland & Morris Louis, a loosely connected group of Washington painters who created abstract compositions in acrylic colors on unprimed canvas. Their work exemplified what the critic Barbara Rose defined as the 'primacy of color' in abstract painting. His works are in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Phillips Collection, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Walker Art Center, Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection & Smithsonian American Art Museum.