Gene Davis American Painter 1920-1985 Gene Davis was a member of the only DC-based art movement, the Washington Color School. These artists, who worked mainly in the 1950s, were all about color – what it could express just on its own, without representing any sort of shape or figure. Davis was born in DC in 1920, and really never left the city. His first job while he was still in college at age 19 was as a sports reporter, where he covered the Washington Redskins (he had to lie a little on his application). Gene Davis American Painter 1920-1985

He continued his career as a journalist, becoming a White House correspondent in the Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman administrations. He even was a poker buddy of Harry Truman! He enjoyed being a reporter, but he also loved art. He never took an art class – he said, “I went to museums and looked at the masters, and tried to take from them what I needed.” He also got good advice from artists he knew. In 1949, he created his first painting – he even called it Composition Number One! – after buying an amateur’s set of paints at a local art store. He was determined to make art, but in fact he couldn’t even draw. What he loved was color. Composition I, 1949

If you just wanted to play with color, how would you do it? On a grid, like Piet Modrian? So, if you love color, what will you do with it? Or maybe with big crazy swirls, like Jackson Pollock?

You could use floaty blobs, like Helen Frankenthaler (she called this one Hyacinth). Or you could make enormous blocks of color broken up by “zips,” like an artist named Barnett Newman did. Barnett Newman especially was a big influence on Gene Davis. He looked at these big paintings of fields of color and all he saw was that vertical line, what Newman called the “zip.”

Gene Davis knew the works of these artists, and the paintings of other modern artist from the DC galleries he liked to visit. He decided that his way of being an artist who only cared about color was to use the STRIPE. If you collect a lot of “zips,” then you have stripes. He told his friend: “I’m much to old to learn to draw – I know how hard that it. I’m going to paint stripes.” Here are two of his first stripe paintings. At this point, he always painted stripes of equal width, either very skinny or a little broader. Red Devil, 1959 Hot Beat, 1964

Raspberry Icicle, 1967 Hot Beat, 1964 Gene Davis felt that if you were making art, it wouldn’t make sense to do what someone had done before you. He said, “I was aware that it was very important to be original. I knew from the beginning that your work had to be new.” No one had done worked with color in stripes like he did. Soon became more famous, even with important people in New York, which was the art capital at the time. He was a very popular and flamboyant man, driving around town in a convertible with a long scarf flying out behind. Here are two of his most famous paintings, Raspberry Icicle and Hot Beat. He loved to give his paintings fun names. Hot Beat, 1964

Red Baron, 1966 John Barley Corn, 1959 Gene Davis also said that what was important was to notice the rhythm of colors as they rolled across the canvas. He compared himself to a jazz musician who improvises. Instead of “playing by ear,” Davis said that he “painted by eye.” That means, he just picked the colors as he went, instead of making a big master plan before got started. Sometimes he picked colors that obviously went together, and sometimes he picked colors that were a surprising combination. You can see in the painting on the right that he is combining skinny stripes on one side of the canvas with wider stripes on the right, changing up the rhythm. John Barley Corn, 1959

Gene Davis got to be pretty famous even internationally in the 1950s and 1960s, but he was still very much a part of the Washington art scene. He became an art teacher (funny for someone who couldn’t draw!), sometimes in his studio, and sometimes at the Corcoran Gallery Art School. Here is the very famous center rotunda of the Corcoran Gallery, where special exhibits were often hung. He painted one side of the room with red stripes, and the other side with blue stripes. He said it created a “dialogue” in the room. Davis loved teaching and felt he got more from his students than they did from him. He said, “When you get kids who are willing to try anything, it makes you young again.” Ferris Wheel, 1982

Sometimes he made pieces of canvas his stripes Sometimes he made pieces of canvas his stripes. These are two of his best known “plank paintings” – one with thick horizontal stripes, and one with dozens of very skinny vertical stripes. Each color is a separate canvas. The photo on the bottom is of a huge wall! A kid would be about half the size of one of the tall planks

The size most people think Gene Davis paintings are … Although most people know Gene Davis for huge mural-sized paintings that take up a whole wall, he also loved to paint tiny things. He called them “micro paintings,” and he would hang a lot of them on a wall all together to make one “painting.” All through his career, he kept it interesting for himself by playing with different scales, depending on his mood. … and how tiny they could be. A wall of micro-paintings

Sometimes Gene Davis made his paintings in very unexpected settings Sometimes Gene Davis made his paintings in very unexpected settings. Here is Franklin’s Footpath (as in, Ben Franklin), which he painted on the street in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1972. It was 400 feet long! Franklin’s Footpath, 1972

Here are a couple more Gene Davis installations Here are a couple more Gene Davis installations. One is painting on a parking lot at a New York art center, created in 1980. The other is colored water in glass vials that make a really modern stained-glass window at a museum on the campus of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Gene Davis works would really brighten up a place!

These aren’t paintings, but rather pictures made with markers on canvas, very late in his career. Gene Davis lived out his years in Washington, DC, a great friend to young artists. He and his wife never had children, but instead gave their time and energy to the local art scene. He was known as a modest artist for whom color was always the most important part of life. And about his interest in stripes, he once told an interviewer: “If I worked for 50 more years, I couldn’t exhaust the possibilities!” He died at age 64.