New Milton Avery Exhibit at The Modern Showcases Artist's Affinity for Color, Form

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Faceless portraits are everywhere these days, from our Instagram feeds to the prints and stickers rampant on Etsy. 

The newest exhibit at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth showcases a 20th-century artist who was making faceless portraits cool — before they were cool.

Opening Sunday, the exhibit highlights Milton Avery, a New York City-based painter who lived between 1888 – 1965. The gallery is essentially a biography of Avery's life, walking viewers through his early works in landscape to his exploration of portraiture — which eventually led to his signature style: colorful, flat, distorted depictions of the world around him, with a focus on form over detail. 

Hence the portraits of people without faces.

"I don't think it mattered to him who they were; he was interested in the human form and presence," says exhibit curator Edith Devaney of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. "Taking the face away emphasizes that rather than the individual. That was deliberate." 

More than 70 works are on display. Aside from portraits, the exhibit also features depictions of the New York cityscape, domestic life, and nature. A wall of sketches gives viewers a peek into Avery's process — one can even try to match some sketches with their respective finished paintings hung up throughout the gallery.

"He had this ability to use colors in such a harmonious way that the whole composition comes together," Devaney says. "He's almost straddled two major American artist movements in impressionism and abstract expressionism. For that reason, he's never really categorized, and maybe that has been a problem, but he's a very important American artist. He continues to be an influence on other artists today." 

The Milton Avery exhibit runs through January 30, 2022. More information is available here.