untitled

Gene B. Davis

1920–1985

untitled, 1970

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: acrylic; canvas

Dimensions:
Canvas/Support (Height x Width x Depth): 25.4 x 30.48 cm
Canvas/Support (Height x Width x Depth): 10 x 12 in

Credit line: The Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States, a joint initiative of the Trustees of the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection and the National Gallery of Art, with generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services

Accession number: 2009.0046

Not on display

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Exhibition Label: "NetWorks: Art and Artists from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection," Mar-2011, Susan Earle, Stephen Goddard, and SMA Interns Gene Davis was a self-taught artist affiliated with the Washington, D.C., Color School, a group central to the Colorfield painting movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He describes himself as an abstractionist from the beginning and is best known for his paintings of colored vertical stripes. By varying the hue and intensity of the stripes, Davis creates a tension between figure and ground. His central concern with color emerges in his observation that, “There is no simpler way to divide a canvas than with straight lines at equal intervals. This enables the viewer to forget the structure and see the color itself.”