Edward Avedisian, Artist Who Painted Bold and Bright, Dies at 71
By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: August 23, 2007, NY Times
Edward Avedisian, who helped establish the hotly colored but emotionally cool abstract painting that succeeded Abstract Expressionism in the early 1960s, died on Friday in Philmont, N.Y. He was 71 and lived in Hudson, N.Y.
“The Monkey Children,” by Edward Avedisian.
His death, at a nursing home, followed a period of declining health, said his son, Joseph Avedisian.
Mr. Avedisian was best known for his work in the 1960s: brilliantly colored, boldly composed canvases that combined Minimalism’s rigor, Pop’s exuberance and the saturated tones of Color Field painting.
A frequent motif was a cluster of bright seedlike orbs corralled at the center of a vibrant monochrome field by larger rings of color, creating an image that could resemble a buoyant cross-section of some unknown fruit.
Mr. Avedisian was born in Lowell, Mass., in 1936 and studied art at the Boston Museum School. By the late 1950s he was living in New York, part of a generation of promising young painters that included Frank Stella, Larry Poons and Darby Bannard. From 1958 to 1963 Mr. Avedisian had six solo shows in New York galleries, including two at the Robert Elkon Gallery, where he continued to show almost every year until 1975. By the early 1960s Mr. Avedisian was a rising star. During that decade, his work appeared on the cover of Artforum, in “The Responsive Eye” exhibition of Op Art at the Museum of Modern Art and in four annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His paintings were widely sought by collectors and acquired by major museums in New York and elsewhere.
In the mid-1970s Mr. Avedisian moved to Hudson and became less visible. His paintings soon began shifting toward representation; he took to calling his abstract paintings “a period style.” But he continued to be well served by his feeling for color, scale and surface. His landscapes described his surroundings in blunt, flat shapes and singing hues reminiscent of those of Marsden Hartley and Paula Modersohn-Becker, but also had an undeniably contemporary verve. In the 1980s he also made bright abstract sculptures from painted Styrofoam.
In 1996 Mr. Avedisian showed his paintings from the 1960s at the Mitchell Algus Gallery, then in SoHo. His last show, dominated by recent landscapes, was in 2003 at Mr. Algus’s gallery, now in Chelsea.
Mr. Avedisian’s marriage ended in divorce. His partner, Judson Baldwin, died last year. In addition to his son, Joseph, of Brooklyn, he is survived by a grandson.
Published: August 23, 2007, NY Times
Edward Avedisian, who helped establish the hotly colored but emotionally cool abstract painting that succeeded Abstract Expressionism in the early 1960s, died on Friday in Philmont, N.Y. He was 71 and lived in Hudson, N.Y.
“The Monkey Children,” by Edward Avedisian.
His death, at a nursing home, followed a period of declining health, said his son, Joseph Avedisian.
Mr. Avedisian was best known for his work in the 1960s: brilliantly colored, boldly composed canvases that combined Minimalism’s rigor, Pop’s exuberance and the saturated tones of Color Field painting.
A frequent motif was a cluster of bright seedlike orbs corralled at the center of a vibrant monochrome field by larger rings of color, creating an image that could resemble a buoyant cross-section of some unknown fruit.
Mr. Avedisian was born in Lowell, Mass., in 1936 and studied art at the Boston Museum School. By the late 1950s he was living in New York, part of a generation of promising young painters that included Frank Stella, Larry Poons and Darby Bannard. From 1958 to 1963 Mr. Avedisian had six solo shows in New York galleries, including two at the Robert Elkon Gallery, where he continued to show almost every year until 1975. By the early 1960s Mr. Avedisian was a rising star. During that decade, his work appeared on the cover of Artforum, in “The Responsive Eye” exhibition of Op Art at the Museum of Modern Art and in four annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His paintings were widely sought by collectors and acquired by major museums in New York and elsewhere.
In the mid-1970s Mr. Avedisian moved to Hudson and became less visible. His paintings soon began shifting toward representation; he took to calling his abstract paintings “a period style.” But he continued to be well served by his feeling for color, scale and surface. His landscapes described his surroundings in blunt, flat shapes and singing hues reminiscent of those of Marsden Hartley and Paula Modersohn-Becker, but also had an undeniably contemporary verve. In the 1980s he also made bright abstract sculptures from painted Styrofoam.
In 1996 Mr. Avedisian showed his paintings from the 1960s at the Mitchell Algus Gallery, then in SoHo. His last show, dominated by recent landscapes, was in 2003 at Mr. Algus’s gallery, now in Chelsea.
Mr. Avedisian’s marriage ended in divorce. His partner, Judson Baldwin, died last year. In addition to his son, Joseph, of Brooklyn, he is survived by a grandson.
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