Gene Davis was an American Color Field painter known for his striking paintings of vertical stripes of color. Born in Washington D.C. in 1920, Davis spent most of his life there, working as a sportswriter before turning to painting in 1949.
Early Life and Career
Before becoming an artist, Davis worked as a journalist, covering the Roosevelt and Truman presidential administrations. He was often
President Truman's partner for poker games. His first art studio was in his apartment on
Scott Circle; later he worked out of a studio on
Pennsylvania Avenue.
Davis's first solo exhibition of drawings was at the
Dupont Theater Gallery in 1952, and his first exhibition of paintings was at
Catholic University in 1953. A decade later he participated in the "
Washington Color Painters" exhibit at the
Washington Gallery of Modern Art in Washington, D.C., which traveled to other venues around the US, and launched the recognition of the
Washington Color School as a regional movement in which Davis was a central figure.
Artistic Style
Davis is best known for his acrylic paintings of colorful vertical stripes, which he began to paint in 1958. The paintings typically repeat particular colors to create a sense of rhythm and repetition with variations. One of the best-known of his paintings,
"Black Grey Beat" (1964), owned by the
Smithsonian American Art Museum, reinforces these musical comparisons in its title.
Davis's artistic style is characterized by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favor of an overall consistency of form and process. In
color field painting, "color is freed from objective context and becomes the subject in itself."
- Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s.
- It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to abstract expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering abstract expressionists.
- Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Barnett Newman are some of the most famous Color Field painters.
Davis's work can be found in the collections of, among others, the
Corcoran Gallery of Art, the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the
Smithsonian American Art Museum. He died on April 6, 1985, in his hometown of Washington, D.C.
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