574 - Milton Avery* (New York 1885 - 1965 New York)

Milton Avery* (New York 1885 - 1965 New York) Fishing Boats, 1961 oil/cardboard 65 x 71 cm signed Milton Avery, dated 1961 verso inscribed "Fishing Boats" by Milton Avery label Marianne Friedland Gallery overlaid Pembroke Gallery label, as well as gallery labels from Yares Gallery and the Ulysses Gallery, New York Provenance: John Sailer (Gallery Ulysses, NY), Institutional Collection, Vienna SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 130000 - 160000 STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 130000 Milton Clark Avery was born on March 7, 1885, in Altmar, New York. His family moved to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1898. Avery had to contribute to the family's support at an early age, initially working jobs that included factory work and office employment. Around 1905, he took part-time classes at the Connecticut League of Art Students, where he shifted his focus from lettering to life drawing. Overall, his artistic training remained largely self-taught. In 1925, Avery moved to New York to dedicate himself fully to painting. There, in 1926, he married the painter Sally Michel, who provided financial support and remained a close artistic companion. Over the following years, he developed his distinctive visual style: he rendered figures, interiors, still lifes, and coastal landscapes using simplified contours, compositions based on flat planes of color, and luminous, finely harmonized color values. His work bridges the gap between representational observation, American Modernism, and a high degree of abstraction regarding pictorial space. An early sign of institutional recognition came in 1929 with the acquisition of a painting by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; the museum also hosted Avery’s first solo exhibition in 1944. Further significant exhibitions followed, including a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1960. His close artistic circle included Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko, both of whom held his uncompromising approach to color in high regard. Avery died on January 3, 1965, in New York City. PLEASE NOTE: The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights and platform fee. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid, the buyer's premium and platform fee. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items. The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.