Milton Avery

Milton Avery (1885–1965), grand colorist of modern American art, is revered for his works spanning early Impressionist landscapes to flattened forms of color, which critics say paved the way for the postwar Abstract Expressionists. Summers spent in Provincetown with Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb saw Avery turn the cerulean combination of water and beaches into broad fields of color that magically converged into simplified forms. Highlighting Avery's sustained role as an influential painter, this book collects over 100 images, featuring many of his paintings alongside work from a stellar cast of artists inspired by his oeuvre, including his daughter, March Avery, as well as Henni Alftan, Harold Ancart, Andrew Cranston, Gary Hume, Jonas Wood and Nicolas Party.

The first to focus exclusively on Milton Avery’s (1885–1965) figurative works, this volume is published in conjunction with Karma’s exhibitions in New York (2025) and Los Angeles (2026). Distilling his subjects to color, line, pattern and light, Avery sought what he called “the purity and essence of the idea—expressed in its simplest form.” His intimate impressions of the world around him and its cast of characters attest to his poetic approach to painting, which inspired numerous younger artists in his orbit—including Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb—to seek their own lyricism, and remains influential to this day. In tandem with archival images, plates and installation photography, this publication features new scholarship by art historians Catherine Lampert and John B. Ravenal; a conversation between curator Massimiliano Gioni, artists Sanya Kantarovsky and Nicolas Party, and Avery’s grandson and fellow artist Sean Cavanaugh; curator and writer Helen Molesworth in conversation with artists Lucy Bull, Marley Freeman and Monica Majoli; and a 1960 essay by curator Adelyn Breeskin on the occasion of Avery’s retrospective at the American Federation of Arts in New York.