biography of Richard POUSETTE-DART (1916-1992)

Birth place: Saint Paul, MN

Addresses: Suffern, NY

Profession: Painter

Studied: mostly self-taught as artist, although did learn from his father Nathaniel Pousette-Dart; Bard Col. (hon. D.H.L., 1965).

Exhibited: Artists Gal., NYC, 1941 (first solo); "Abstract Painting & Sculpture in America," 1944 & traveling exhibs., 1969 & 1971, all at MoMA; PAFA Ann., 1946-64 (5 times); Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gal., NYC, 1947 (solo); "The New Decade," 1955, 1959, 1963 (retrospective); "New York School," LACMA; Documenta 2, Kassel, Germany, 1959; "American Abstract Expressionists & Imagists," Guggenheim Mus., 1961; Corcoran Gal biennials, 1959, 1965 (silver); AIC, 1965 (Comstock Prize); WMAA biennials, 1949-73. Other awards: Nat Arts Council Award, 1966.

Work: MoMA; WMAA; NMAA; AGAA; Albright-Knox Art Gal.; Johnson Wax Coll.

Comments: A first-generation Abstract Expressionist, he was one the group of young radical artists, along with Pollock and de Kooning, who were called the "The Irascibles" in the famous Life magazine article of 1951. Pousette-Dart's early style, of the 1930s, combined elements of cubism and surrealism. About 1940 he began producing works in which the painting surface was cluttered and heavily encrusted with small biomorphic forms set off by thin webs of lines meandering throughout the canvas. By the 1950s the biomorphic forms were replaced by small, more abstract clusters of color, and by the 1960s form was further abstracted and dematerialzed so that the entrire surface of his canvas appeared as a constellation of rich texture and color. Throughout his career, Pousette-Dart's work was driven by his interest in the spiritual and mystical aspects of the self and the universe. Teaching: BMFA Sch., 1959; New Sch. Social Res., 1959-61; Sch. Visual Arts, NYC, 1965; Minneapolis Inst. FA, 1965; Columbia Univ., 1968; Sarah Lawrence Col., 1971, 1973; ASL, 1980-92.

Sources: WW73; Baigell, Dictionary; Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 351, 415; 300 Years of American Art, 959; Richard Pousette-Dart: Transcendental Expressionist (1961); John Gordon, Richard Pousette-Dart (exh. cat., WMAA, 1963); Lawrence Campbell, Pousette-Dart: Circles and Cycles (1963); Charlotte Willard, Yankee Vedanta (1967); Falk, Exh. Record Series.