Jack Whitten valuation
American abstract painter who invented new ways of making a painting, dragging acrylic across the canvas in a single pass.
Jack Whitten (1939–2018) was born in Bessemer, Alabama, the son of a coal miner and a seamstress.
What a work by Jack Whitten is worth
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Bio
Jack Whitten (1939–2018) was born in Bessemer, Alabama, the son of a coal miner and a seamstress. He began pre-medical studies at the Tuskegee Institute, heard and met Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery bus boycott, and took part in civil rights demonstrations while studying art at Southern University in Baton Rouge. In 1960 he enrolled at Cooper Union in New York, graduating in fine art in 1964, and stayed in New York, where he met Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence and Norman Lewis. He became one of the most inventive abstract painters of his time; the Museum of Modern Art credits him with art-making techniques that were the first of their kind. He laid nylon mesh over wet acrylic to give his surfaces a soft, feathery effect, and dragged paint across the canvas in one motion with a T-shaped tool he called the developer. In 2016 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Paintings on canvas, works on paper and some sculpture all appear. His acrylic surfaces are often built up and textured, so they should be checked for cracking, losses and old repairs, and a gallery invoice and the date of the work place it within his long career.
At a glance
- Born
- 5 December 1939, Bessemer
- Died
- 20 January 2018, Manhattan
- Movement
- Abstract expressionism
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