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Lot Essay
Fish manifests Milton Avery’s unique integration of American Folk Art and European Modernist influences. The melding of these dual influences is most evident in his animal paintings, a subject that he visited time and again throughout his career, producing increasingly abstract compositions. Avery’s bold use of color in Fish is perhaps the most characteristic and striking feature of the work. Executed in 1948, the work draws in part from his admiration of the work of Matisse, while transforming his style into a new vision. Avery’s ability is apparent in the way he interprets the Fauvists’ range of color, but his true genius as an artist resides in his transformation of their vision.
In Fish Avery omits extraneous details and replaces them with suggestive sgraffito and dry, coarse brushwork. The subtle humor so often displayed in Avery’s work is here reflected in the wavy signature at lower left, which seems to undulate in the same manner as the incised, curvy parallel lines representing underwater currents throughout the scene. Meanwhile he employs simplified shapes of color and pattern to construct the fish and water. This conscientious approach to his work was recognized during Avery’s day, when a critic noted in 1944, “Milton Avery…is a man almost anyone nowadays would recognize instantly as a sophisticate. But he too bothers little about perspective and at times makes use of naïve detail, two facts which may conceivably make it difficult for the historian of five hundred years hence to clarify him exactly…It seems clear to the contemporary eye that what primitivism he displays is of the conscious variety.” (Robert Coates as quoted in R. Hobbs, Milton Avery, New York, 1990, p. 68) Avery’s distinguished and unique style of a highly saturated palette and exaggerated figures is clearly exhibited in Fish.
In Fish Avery omits extraneous details and replaces them with suggestive sgraffito and dry, coarse brushwork. The subtle humor so often displayed in Avery’s work is here reflected in the wavy signature at lower left, which seems to undulate in the same manner as the incised, curvy parallel lines representing underwater currents throughout the scene. Meanwhile he employs simplified shapes of color and pattern to construct the fish and water. This conscientious approach to his work was recognized during Avery’s day, when a critic noted in 1944, “Milton Avery…is a man almost anyone nowadays would recognize instantly as a sophisticate. But he too bothers little about perspective and at times makes use of naïve detail, two facts which may conceivably make it difficult for the historian of five hundred years hence to clarify him exactly…It seems clear to the contemporary eye that what primitivism he displays is of the conscious variety.” (Robert Coates as quoted in R. Hobbs, Milton Avery, New York, 1990, p. 68) Avery’s distinguished and unique style of a highly saturated palette and exaggerated figures is clearly exhibited in Fish.