Loretta Howard Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of Thomas Downing paintings 1961 – 1975 on view from November 11th to December 19th, 2015.
Thomas Downing was a key member of the Washington Color School along with Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis and Howard Mehring. Like Noland and Louis, the artist stained the surfaces of his unprimed canvases directly with acrylic paint in order to attain a completely flat surface. Downing is best known for his use of dots – arranged in circles and grids – as a compositional device. His work was most directly influenced by the formalism and color theory of Josef Albers.
“In the beginning…it [the circle] was a matter of preference – they seemed right for me.. But I’ve found out some things since then which are why I have continued to make circles. One of these is a remarkable thing about color: that it can move while being still.” [Interview with Leslie Judd Alexander, The Washington Post, 1962].
Works by Thomas Downing are included in the permanent collection of several institutions, including Smithsonian American Art Museum, Guggenheim, Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, SF MOMA, The Phillips Collection, Hunter Museum of American Art and Norton Simon Museum.
An essay by Dr. Phillip Romero will be available in an online catalogue.