Richard Pousette-Dart: 1930s

Best known as a founding member of the New York School of painting, Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992) initially pursued a career as a sculptor. The son of Nathaniel Pousette, a painter, art director, educator, and art writer, and Flora Louise Dart, a poet and musician, Pousette-Dart was raised in an environment surrounded by music, poetry, and the visual arts, and began drawing and painting by the age of eight. Introduced to African, Oceanic, and Native American art by his father, Pousette-Dart made frequent visits to the Museum of Natural History as a young man. In 1938, he forged a close friendship with John Graham, whose writings were closely aligned with his own interests in spiritual concerns and so-called primitive art. Throughout the 1930s, Pousette-Dart was most entranced by the work of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, whose abstract sculptures, drawings, and forms in brass greatly informed the orientation of the young American artist. Read more.

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