Danese is pleased to announce its first exhibition of paintings by Larry Poons. The opening reception will be held from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 15. The exhibition will continue through March 17.

In a review of Larry Poons’s recent paintings, the critic Karen Wilkin states that “they seem to sum up the whole of Poons’s evolution since the pulsing ‘dot’ and ‘lozenge’ paintings that established his reputation four decades ago, at the same time that they move into apparently unexplored territory.”¹ Alive with gesture and energy, myriad flourishes of color interact and resonate with each other– “purples, crimsons, ochres, and teals jostle, scurry, glide.”²

For David Ebony, author of the forthcoming monograph on Larry Poons, these “resplendent”, dynamic paintings achieve “a kind of Wagnerian crescendo of movement and color in the painterly epic that has unfolded over the artist’s 50-year career. …Poons is ever present in these restless and rigorous works. Here, he seems to have completely given himself over to the act of painting–mentally, physically and emotionally.”³

Larry Poons was born in 1937 in Tokyo and was raised in the New York City area. In 1955, he attended the New England Conservancy of Music, and two years later transferred to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was given his first one-man exhibition in 1963 at Richard Bellamy’s famed Green Gallery, and in 1965 his work was included in MoMA’s celebrated exhibition The Responsive Eye. In 1969, he was the youngest artist featured in curator Henry Geldzahler’s landmark exhibition, New York Painting and Sculpture, 1940-1970. In 1981, the MFA Boston organized an exhibition of his paintings from the 1970s. The work of Larry Poons is included in major museum collections throughout the United States and abroad. He currently lives and works in New York City.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with a preface by David Ebony and an essay by Phyllis Tuchman.



¹ Wilkin, Karen. “The Music of Chance,” Art in America, April 2006, p. 133.
² Tuchman, Phyllis. “Larry Poons: The Joy of Color,” Larry Poons Recent Paintings. New York: Danese, 2007.
³ Ebony, David. Excerpted from the forthcoming monograph on Larry Poons, Larry Poons Recent Paintings. New York: Danese, 2007.

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