Hen

Milton Clark Avery

"Hen" was created in 1954, two years after Milton Avery began to make woodcuts. He cut directly on the block using the white to create the image. He created twenty-one woodcuts in three years between 1952 and 1955, and "Hen" was the 18th in the series. He also printed a second edition of "Hen" with a yellow background. This impression has white-out in the lower right of the image that the artist applied to diminish the effect of stray ink that he did not wish to show.

Art historian Alan Fern wrote in the Harry H. Lunn Jr. catalogue raisonné of Avery's prints: "All of the woodblocks were printed by rubbing, not in a press, and this enabled the artist to vary the background tone of each impression as he printed....To a great extent, each woodblock print is an individual experience; it is rare to find two of Avery's woodcuts that are exactly the same..."

Milton Avery was born in Sand Bank, New York on March 7, 1885. He was the youngest of four children and the family of six moved to Hartford, Connecticut in 1898. In 1905, Avery began attending classes at the Connecticut League of Art Students in Hartford and it appears that in 1918 he attended the School of the Art Society also in Hartford. In 1920, he began spending summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts and it was there, in 1924, that he met Sally Michel. Avery moved to New York in 1925 and married Sally. He attended evening classes at the Art Students’ League and in 1927 began to exhibit in group shows. His first New York exhibition was held in 1928 at the Opportunity Gallery and that same year he befriended Mark Rothko who introduced him to Barnett Newman and Adolph Gottlieb.

In 1944, he had his first museum show at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Milton and Sally were both awarded fellowships at the MacDowell Artists’ Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire in 1953, 1954, and 1956. In 1960, Milton received a Ford Foundation grant. Milton Avery died in New York City on January 3, 1965.

It has been very difficult to pin down dates for even the briefest biography on Milton Avery because his date of birth and other significant early dates differ from one major reference to another. Barbara Haskell confronted the same difficulty in her research on the artist for her book, "Milton Avery." The following quote is from her first paragraph of her book: "Milton Avery lived and worked as if to avoid biography. He left no significant autobiographical remnants. He wrote virtually nothing; participated in no organizations; and spoke with such reticence that scant oral testimony was recorded. He seemed to have had no will to express himself in any way other than painting."<,i>