“I really am not interested in abstract art. I'm interested in anything that is wonderful, that is a miracle to me, that is alive."
Richard Pousette-Dart was the youngest artist of the New York School’s first generation of Abstract Expressionists. During his career, Pousette-Dart created a lexicon of biomorphic and totemic forms that provided rich visual and symbolic sources that he would explore throughout his long career in a multitude of painterly approaches.
He is recognized for his painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture, which are unified by his expressive use of gesture, form, and color. Never embracing action painting and instead pursuing his own aesthetic, Pousette-Dart sought universal significance in his art, expressed through nonobjective means.
Deeply influenced by Native American art and textiles, Pousette-Dart distanced himself from his contemporaries with an interest in spirituality, his paintings dealing with traditional dualities between light and substance, spirit and body, and harmony and discord. He favored heavy layers of acrylic and oils with small, thick brushstrokes to emphasize luminosity and distinctive colors.
His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1963, 1974, 1998); Museum of Modern Art (1969); The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1997); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as well as the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy (2007). Recent monographic presentations have been held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2014); The Drawing Center, New York (2015); Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom (2018); and Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine (2018).
