BORN IN 1885, Milton Avery was a unique American talent in the early to middle years of the twentieth century. His works up until 1918 show the influence of French Impressionism. His later works in the 1940s paved the way for Rothko’s Abstract Expressionism. In fact, the young Mark Rothko was a daily visitor to Avery’s Greenwich Village apartment in the late 1920s where the great man’s wife, Sally would organise discussions and poetry readings fuelled by cigarettes and coffee. Avery said very little, if anything, at these events but would sit in a corner sketching.
His output was prodigious, often generating a painting a day. After the financier Roy Rothschild Neuberger decided to back him in the