Gene Davis Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
American, 1920-1985
Davis was born in Washington D.C. in 1920 and spent nearly all his life there. Before he began to paint in 1949, he worked as a sportswriter, covering the Washington Football Team and other local teams. Working as a journalist in the late 1940s, he covered the Roosevelt and Truman presidential administrations, and was often President Truman's partner for poker games. His first art studio was in his apartment on Scott Circle; later he worked out of a studio on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Davis's first solo exhibition of drawings was at the Dupont Theater Gallery in 1952, and his first exhibition of paintings was at Catholic University in 1953. A decade later he participated in the "Washington Color Painters" exhibit at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in Washington, DC, which traveled to other venues around the US, and launched the recognition of the Washington Color School as a regional movement in which Davis was a central figure. The Washington painters were among the most prominent of the mid-century color field painters. Though, he worked in a variety of media and styles, including ink, oil, acrylic, video, and collage, Davis is best known by far for his acrylic paintings (mostly on canvas) of colorful vertical stripes, which he began to paint in 1958. The paintings typically repeat particular colors to create a sense of rhythm and repetition with variations. One of the best-known of his paintings, "Black Grey Beat" (1964), owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum reinforces these musical comparisons in its title. The pairs of alternating black and grey stripes are repeated across the canvas, and recognizable even as other colors are substituted for black and grey, and returned to even as the repetition of dark and light pairs is here and there broken by sharply contrasting colors.
In 1972 Davis created Franklin's Footpath, which was at the time the world's largest artwork, by painting colorful stripes on the street in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the world's largest painting, Niagara (43,680 square feet), in a parking lot in Lewiston, NY. His "micro-paintings", at the other extreme, were as small as 3/8 of an inch square.
For a public work in a different medium altogether, he designed the color patterns of the "Solar Wall," a set of tubes filled with dyed water and backlit by fluorescent lights, at the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Davis began teaching in 1966 at the Corcoran School of Art, where he became a permanent member of the faculty. His works are in the collections of, among others, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
He died on April 6, 1985 in Washington, DC.to
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Artist: Gene Davis
Meandering Print Series
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
A sophisticated and marvelous work for any forward interior. It both gives a sense of space, calm, playfulness and it actually pulls you in as a focal point work of art. Framing is ...
Category
1970s Abstract Gene Davis Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Screen
Untitled (Purple and Yellow)
By Gene Davis
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled (Purple and Yellow)
Pastel on paper, 1981
Signed and dated lower right
Provenance:
Collection of Jan Cowles
Jan Cowles was married to Gardner Cowles owner of Cowles Media Co...
Category
1980s Abstract Gene Davis Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Pastel
Untitled (Purple and Yellow)
By Gene Davis
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled (Purple and Yellow)
Pastel on paper, 1981
Signed and dated lower right
Provenance:
Collection of Jan Cowles
Jan Cowles was married to Gardner Cowles owner of Cowles Media Company (1935–1998) which owned newspapers, magazines and information publishing company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States. The company operated Cowles Business Media, Cowles Creative Publishing, and Cowles Enthusiast Media units.
Owners of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune from 1935 to 1998, other newspapers owned at one time by Cowles Media and its affiliates included the Des Moines Register, the Buffalo Courier...
Category
1980s Abstract Gene Davis Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Pastel
"Untitled" 20th century on paper signed and dated drawing
By Gene Davis
Located in New York, NY
Gene Davis
1920 – active in Washington DC - 1985
Untitled
1981
Colored felt tip on paper
17 ¾ x 12 ½ inches (49 x 32 cm)
Framed dimensions: 24 x 14 inches (61x 35.5 cm)
Signed and ...
Category
1980s Abstract Expressionist Gene Davis Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Paper, Felt Pen
Untitled (Yellow, Gray and Pink)
By Gene Davis
Located in Fairlawn, OH
Untitled (Yellow, Gray and Pink)
Pastel on paper, 1981
Signed and dated lower right
Condition: Excellent
Sheet size: 12 x 18 inches
Frame size: 15 x 21 inches
Provenance: Jan Cowles
...
Category
1980s Abstract Gene Davis Drawings and Watercolor Paintings
Materials
Pastel
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Gene Davis (1920-1985) is an important American artist associated with the Color Field movement and the Washington Color School.
He is noted for his minimalist compositions that favored saturated colors presented in vertical stripes. However it wasn't until the very end of the 1950's that he established his signature style. And despite being included in legendary exhibitions such as Clement Greenberg's "Post-Painterly Abstraction" at LACMA in 1964, Davis didn't give up his day job until 1968.
Today, after Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis, Davis is one of the most high-profile artists associated with the Washington Color School.
Today Davis' work can be found in all of the major American museums including the MoMA, the National Gallery of Art however it is the Smithsonian Institute that has one of the largest holdings of his creations.
The Smithsonian on Gene Davis' early work:
"Davis began his career making gestural, abstract drawings in black ink, but the various grays in drawings such as Saber Dance indicate an incipient interest in color. Although he is best known for his colorful paintings of vertical stripes made later in his career, early drawings like this one reveal the breadth of his interests and his range of expression. Davis made the drawings without a subject in mind and gave them titles after he completed them."
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Gene Davis drawings and watercolor paintings for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Gene Davis drawings and watercolor paintings available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Gene Davis in crayon, pastel and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 1980s and is mostly associated with the abstract style. Not every interior allows for large Gene Davis drawings and watercolor paintings, so small editions measuring 18 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Perry Burns, Thomas Hammer, and Reuben Nakian. Gene Davis drawings and watercolor paintings prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $3,000 and tops out at $3,000, while the average work can sell for $3,000.