The Painter Who Shaped Rothko
The usual story is that Milton Avery mentored, then was eclipsed by, the famed abstract expressionist. But it was more complicated than that.
In the early 1930s, a group of American artists—Milton Avery, Mark Rothko, and Adolph Gottlieb—formed a close friendship while spending summers together on Cape Ann, a coastal region in northeastern Massachusetts. This area, known for its gritty authenticity, gritty industry, and vast Atlantic sea and sky, provided the perfect environment for these young artists to explore and develop their artistic skills.
Avery, the eldest of the three, served as the mentor figure for Rothko and Gottlieb. He was a confident, good-humored man who was in the prime of his life and lived comfortably in Gloucester, a bustling artists' colony. Unlike his younger protégés, Avery was not particularly intellectual. He was a taciturn pragmatist with a gentle sense of humor who believed that olives, like modern art, could taste ugly until one learned to appreciate them.
Together, the three friends explored the port, filling their sketchbooks with small-scale watercolor paintings of Gloucester's wharves, warehouses, and fish-processing facilities. They also eagerly awaited a total solar eclipse, which provided inspiration for Avery's amusing watercolor painting, "Eclipse Watchers." This painting depicts people at Good Harbor Beach viewing the celestial phenomenon through smoked glasses and colored film.
The relationships among these artists, particularly between Avery and Rothko, highlight the moment of greatest transition in American modernism. While Rothko and Gottlieb later became central figures in a mid-century revolution that transformed modern art, Avery's influence and contributions have often been overlooked.
Written by urgent.news from The Atlantic's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
