MARCH AVERY
INTERNATIONAL COLLECTION
March Avery, born in 1932, is the daughter of two well-known artists, Milton Avery and Sally Michel. Despite her lineage, the younger Avery studied philosophy at Barnard College and remained largely self-taught as an artist. Although she developed a personal style, there are traces of influences of her parents’ work and that of their acquaintances, including Mark Rothko, Marsden Hartley, Karl Knaths, and Herman Maril. Avery’s style derives from a common element seen in the aforementioned artists’ work, namely expansive, open spaces. Paris Park II shows figures at leisure, a familiar theme from French and American painting dating back to impressionism and the mid-nineteenth century. Like her parents, Avery favors figures in respite, almost frozen in time. Her works of seated figures, still lifes, and beach scenes are at once momentary and timeless. As Avery weaves her seated figures into the vast expanse, she is able to balance a traditional subject with a modern approach that emphasizes shape and color. Her output is a stylistic hybrid: she blends the figurative element of contemporary American realists with an unmodulated setting favored by the abstract school.
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