George McNeil (1908 – 1995) was an American abstract expressionist painter.George McNeil was born in Queens, New York, on February 22, 1908, the youngest child of an Irish Catholic working-class family. He attended Brooklyn Tech High School and the Pratt Institute, which he left before gaining his degree.
From the Cubist-influenced compositions of his earlier Hofmann student years, McNeil moved to full abstraction by 1936. His early 1950s paintings were "both abstract and expressionist" with an active surface “ very moving, full of feeling, emotional”displaying the “painterly touch” that was identified with the artists exhibiting at the Charles Egan Gallery. His paintings remained fully abstract until the early 1960s when figures and faces began to appear in the abstract field, particularly in the "Dancer" and "Bather" series. McNeil commented to art historian Irving Sandler in 1968: my work has always had not a human figure image, but it always had a figural image. There always seems to be some kind of center image...that is figural, or imagistic.... is not only found: it’s completely abstract. You see this is the whole thing: I’m not a figure painter at all. I’m an abstract painter where I hope that bringing in the figure brings in certain human or psychological connotations or associations.
From 1980, dynamic situations such as discos, New York City, football, street life or graffiti activate his paintings. His work is characterized by profound attention to color and complex abstract volumes. Wikipedia
From the Cubist-influenced compositions of his earlier Hofmann student years, McNeil moved to full abstraction by 1936. His early 1950s paintings were "both abstract and expressionist" with an active surface “ very moving, full of feeling, emotional”displaying the “painterly touch” that was identified with the artists exhibiting at the Charles Egan Gallery. His paintings remained fully abstract until the early 1960s when figures and faces began to appear in the abstract field, particularly in the "Dancer" and "Bather" series. McNeil commented to art historian Irving Sandler in 1968: my work has always had not a human figure image, but it always had a figural image. There always seems to be some kind of center image...that is figural, or imagistic.... is not only found: it’s completely abstract. You see this is the whole thing: I’m not a figure painter at all. I’m an abstract painter where I hope that bringing in the figure brings in certain human or psychological connotations or associations.
From 1980, dynamic situations such as discos, New York City, football, street life or graffiti activate his paintings. His work is characterized by profound attention to color and complex abstract volumes. Wikipedia
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