Milton Avery: The Figure

Discover Avery’s luminous, soft figurative paintings and portraits with the expository aid of abundant scholarship and archival imagery The first to focus exclusively on Milton Avery’s (1885–1965) figurative works, this volume is published in conjunction with Karma’s exhibitions in New York (2025) and Los Angeles (2026). Distilling his subjects to color, line, pattern and light, Avery sought what he called “the purity and essence of the idea―expressed in its simplest form.” His intimate impressions of the world around him and its cast of characters attest to his poetic approach to painting, which inspired numerous younger artists in his orbit―including Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb―to seek their own lyricism, and remains influential to this day. In tandem with archival images, plates and installation photography, this publication features new scholarship by art historians Catherine Lampert and John B. Ravenal; a conversation between curator Massimiliano Gioni, artists Sanya Kantarovsky and Nicolas Party, and Avery’s grandson and fellow artist Sean Cavanaugh; curator and writer Helen Molesworth in conversation with artists Lucy Bull, Marley Freeman and Monica Majoli; and a 1960 essay by curator Adelyn Breeskin on the occasion of Avery’s retrospective at the American Federation of Arts in New York.