In his own inimitable and provocative fashion, Larry Poons offers a persuasive colloquy that maintains an enduring discourse with Abstract Expressionism – America’s first “Periclean” movement of international dominance in the visual arts. His new paintings continue a line of inquiry into the language of sensual, spirited abstraction and “unabated, unapologetic love of the medium.”[1]
“It’s daunting to think of the paintings and painters passing through Larry Poons’s mind these days. They seem to include Poussin, Claude, Cézanne, Renoir, Bonnard, early Picasso and always Pollock. At least those names can come to mind in front of Mr. Poons lush, teeming expanses of short, crazed, curling brush strokes, pastel colors and intimations – but only that – of landscape, bacchanals and Mediterranean sun.”[2]
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.