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Larry Poons

New Paintings

January 10 – February 8, 2014

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons, installation view

Larry Poons Sweet Mountain Cat, 2013

Larry Poons
Sweet Mountain Cat, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 65 1/2 x 62 1/2 inches

Larry Poons Araminty, 2013

Larry Poons
Araminty, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 65 x 92 7/8 inches

Larry Poons Grayson and Whitter, 2013

Larry Poons
Grayson and Whitter, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 72 5/8 x 65 3/4 inches

Larry Poons On the Slide, 2013

Larry Poons
On the Slide, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 65 1/2 x 63 3/8 inches

Larry Poons Book of Minutes, 2013

Larry Poons
Book of Minutes, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 64 x 70 1/8 inches

Larry Poons Stolen Blues, 2013

Larry Poons
Stolen Blues, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 64 5/8 x 54 1/8 inches

Larry Poons The Chinqua Pins, 2013

Larry Poons
The Chinqua Pins, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 62 1/2 x 50 1/4 inches

Larry Poons Lindy Clear, 2013

Larry Poons
Lindy Clear, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 65 1/8 x 76 inches

Larry Poons Back Road Boy, 2013

Larry Poons
Back Road Boy, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 68 1/4 x 70 1/4 inches

Larry Poons Big Tilda, 2013

Larry Poons
Big Tilda, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 66 1/4 X 109 inches

Larry Poons The Forlorn Patrol, 2013

Larry Poons
The Forlorn Patrol, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 66 3/8 x 104 inches

"Larry Poons's lively and vivacious recent abstractions further enrich the latest chapter of a remarkable career predicated on color and light."(1) Poons creates a visual and emotional environment ripe with gesture, raw energy and improvisation. The relentless Dionysian surge of color against color is tempered by a deeply considered meditation on the nature of art and being.
As Robert Pincus-Witten observed, accumulating "freshly-made gestures or suddenly-discovered past ones, Poons instrumentalizes chance (the very hallmark of Abstract Expressionist painting) as he moves along the canvas.…the painting oscillates back and forth from the local to the universal." Traces of remembered landscape and distant figures surge and then withdraw into "small energetic registers of cascading strokes." (2) Intensely individual and intimate, each definitive brushstroke becomes a part of the whole – the short and frenetic, the calm and the considered, the bold edge of confidence – an arena of action tamed by the sublime.
Larry Poons was born in 1937 and grew up in New York. In 1955, he attended the New England Conservatory of Music, and two years later transferred to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was given his first one-man exhibition in 1963 at Richard Bellamy’s famed Green Gallery, and in 1965 his work was included in MoMA’s celebrated exhibition, The Responsive Eye. In 1969, Poons was the youngest artist featured in curator Henry Geldzahler’s landmark survey, New York Painting and Sculpture, 1940-1970. In 1981 the MFA Boston organized an exhibition of his paintings from the 1970s. The work of Larry Poons is included in major museum and private collections throughout the United States and abroad. He currently lives and works in New York.
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(1) Phyllis Tuchman, 2014.
(2) Pincus-Witten, Robert. "Larry Poons." New York: Danese, 2009.