Ramapo

Leading the first generation of Abstract Expressionism, Richard Pousette-Dart’s works were largely influential on masters such as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Painted in 1975, Richard Pousette-Dart’s Ramapao clearly evokes the colorism that makes his paintings undoubtedly iconic. The array of colors carefully painted across the canvas do not take definitive shapes, but rather paint a field of hue that gracefully encompasses the eye. While the litany of colors, almost rainbow-like, makes the painting exceptional, the precious blue background provides calmness, similar to Pousette-Dart’s 1974 Hieroglyph #4, a remarkable example from the artist’s Presence series. Both Hieroglyph #4 and Ramapo represent the amazingly full and accomplished works that embrace the Presence series, a theme begun in the 1960s that obsessed the artist for over four decades. Pousette-Dart’s neo-pointillism is visibly depicted in Ramapo and exemplifies the uniqueness he brings as one to the abstract expressionist movement. Ramapo’ s blue and green shades suggest the influence of nature, or as Pousette-Dart explains, “a supra nature, a thing in itself-its own nature, answering the deep need of man’s imaginative and aesthetic being” (R. Pousette-Dart quoted in R. Hobbs and J. Kuebler, Richard Pousette-Dart, exh. cat., Indianapolis, 1990, p. 74). Each brush stroke demonstrates the lyrical nature of his work and the preciseness behind color creates a certain delicacy. Pousette-Dart's work is included in many important museum collections and has been the subject of numerous retrospectives, most prominently, the Whitney Museum of American Art (1963), Museum of Modern Art circulating exhibition (1969-1970), Indianapolis Museum of Art (1990-1991), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1997-1998) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2007).