1. Richard Warren Pousette-Dart was an American abstract expressionist artist most recognized as a founder of the New York School of painting.
20 Facts About Richard Pousette-Dart
1. 2.
Richard Pousette-Dart was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota and moved to Valhalla, New York in 1918.
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Richard Pousette-Dart's mother, Flora Louise Pousette-Dart, was a poet and musician; his father, Nathaniel J Pousette-Dart, was a painter, art director, educator, and writer about art.
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Richard Pousette-Dart's parents had combined their last names to form Pousette-Dart upon marrying.
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Richard Pousette-Dart held in high regard the work of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who embraced tribal art and its ability to convey power and mystery through three-dimensional form.
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In 1938, Pousette-Dart began a friendship with Russian emigre John D Graham, whose writings offered a framework for engaging the ideas of European cubists and surrealists then being exhibited in New York City.
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In 1951, Richard Pousette-Dart relocated to a farmhouse in Sloatsburg, New York, and eventually to nearby Suffern, where he maintained a studio for the remainder of his life.
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In 1950, Richard Pousette-Dart executed several drawings for a book written and published by editor and book designer Merle Armitage.
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Richard Pousette-Dart exhibited with the Betty Parsons Gallery until its close in 1983, and as such, his work was introduced to a younger generation of artists showing at the gallery, including Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Richard Tuttle, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jack Youngerman.
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Richard Pousette-Dart was fiercely independent and temperamentally disinclined to the downtown New York City tavern scene that fueled the artistic personas of Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and others.
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Richard Pousette-Dart did contribute to key discourses that shaped the emergence of the New York School: in 1948, he attended gatherings at the Subjects of the Artist experimental school; in 1950 he participated in a three-day closed-door conference at Studio 35; and a year later Richard Pousette-Dart was included in the landmark exhibition Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America at The Museum of Modern Art.
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The work of Richard Pousette-Dart is often noted for its meditative and spiritual orientation, although the artist was not affiliated with any organized religious entity.
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From 1950 to 1961 Richard Pousette-Dart taught painting at the New School for Social Research.
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Richard Pousette-Dart was not prosecuted for his positions or actions.
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Richard Pousette-Dart married poet Evelyn Gracey in New York City in 1946.
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Richard Pousette-Dart's son Jon Pousette-Dart is a musician and founder of The Pousette-Dart Band.
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Richard Pousette-Dart died on October 25,1992, in New York City.
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In 1965, Richard Pousette-Dart was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bard College, and in 1981 was honored with the inaugural Distinguished Lifetime in Art award from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation.
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Richard Pousette-Dart exhibited in the main pavilion of the 40th Venice Biennale in 1982.
20.
The estate of Richard Pousette-Dart is represented by The Pace Gallery.