Untitled abstraction

 

John Grillo

  1917 - 2014 (biography)

2000  

color monotype 

8 1/4 x 10" image 

pencil, lower right 

1 of 1  

pencil dated after the signature 

 

 

unique 

 

MASC190 

$950.00 

A late-career work from an artist whose varied style made him difficult to categorize, from Ashcan to Abstract Expressionist to Figurative and back again, but whose love of color and sensual linework remained with him throughout his career.

Grillo holds the distinct title of being one of the most recognized California Abstract Expressionists who spent very little time there. Following his stint in the war, Grillo's time in the state took place at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) during its most pivotal moment: under the new directorship of Douglas McAgy in 1945, it became the uncontested hub for Abstract Expressionism on the West Coast nearly overnight. For two years beginning in 1946 Grillo would rub shoulders with some of the country's leading experimental artists and teachers of the time, among them Hassel Smith, Elmer Bischoff, and Clyfford Still, and Richard Diebenkorn.

He left the school in 1948, but frequently noted this period as one of the most influential in his life. This monotype retains the influences of that era as well as Grillo's own style. While many of his cohorts' work reveled in muted tones and dark moods, Grillo preferred the saturated color he'd come to love in his pre-war studies and his time working with Alexander Calder. However, of equal importance was the total freedom of automatic line and the Abstract Expressionist approach to working with a medium, rather than making a medium work for the artist. In this monotype, the movement and life emerge from the sheet, lively and bold.