Milton and Sally Michel Avery Paint

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Milton and Sally Michel Avery
Paint Their Art

Female Painter
Milton Avery (1885-1965) American
Oil on canvas, 40" x 32" (w x h), 1945
Christies auction estimate $1,500,000 $2,500,000 USD

Why I enjoy this painting:

Milton Avery uses orange and blue as important color elements, in a semi-abstract composition. The orange shapes float, the focus of the figure and what she's doing. The blues, two tones, can be seen as one, or two, while creating a background for the upper part of the figure to float, this focusing the eye. The red/pink are there, supporting the rest of the painting, the dark read as an anchor. And the tension of the paintbrush about to touch the canvas. You see that brush's tip as about to touch the canvas, based on the figure, and not pulling away having touched it, don't you? And you can imagine what Sally is painting. See six of Sally's figure painting's below.

Throughout their lives, Milton and his wife Sally Michel Avery shared their studio space together, painting side by side, critiquing each other's work, while developing a shared style using abstracted subjects, color fields, and harmonious unusual colors juxtapositions. Their daughter, March, is a painter, too, and in the same style, still painting at 91 years-old in 2024.

Source: Christies
Sally, Milton's painter wife, explained that he was always more focused on color and form than the underlying subject itself, recounting, "His problem was always a painter's problem, which had nothing to do with actually what he was painting. He really thought in terms of shapes and spaces and colors and things like that. And the subject was just something that he used to start a move on this other journey." (Oral history interview with Sally Michel Avery, 1967 November 3. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

What Sally might've been painting... go figure...

1
Reclining
Sally Michel Avery (1902-2003) American
Oil on canvas board, 20" x 16" (w x h), 1982

2
Reclining Nude
Sally Avery
Oil on canvas board, 16" x 12" (w x h), 1981

3
Nude
Sally Michel Avery (1902-2003) American
Crayon, ink, and graphite on paper,
13" x 16" (w x h), 1989

4
Pale Nude
Sally Michel Avery (1902-2003) American
Oil on canvas board, 36" x 24" (w x h), 1963

5
Nude Asleep
Sally Michel Avery (190218" x 24" (w x h), -2003) American
Oil on canvas board, 1973

6
Model Nude
Sally Michel Avery (1902-2003) American
Oil on canvas, 35" x 49" (w x h), 1978

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