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Joseph Clark Collection

Ray Parker

1922–1990 · Abstract painting

Ray Parker (1922–1990) was an American abstract painter, born in Beresford, South Dakota, associated with Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting. He is best known for his Simple Paintings of the late 1950s and early 1960s, cloud-like forms of clear colour on white grounds, and his work is in the collections of MoMA, the Whitney, the Met and Tate.

In the collection

About the artist

Ray Parker (Raymond Parker) was born in Beresford, South Dakota, in 1922 and died in New York in 1990 (The Met). He entered the University of Iowa in 1940 and completed his MFA there in 1948, then taught painting at the University of Minnesota from 1948 to 1951 (Wikipedia). By the late 1950s he was teaching at Hunter College in New York (Wikipedia).

He is associated with Abstract Expressionism, Colour Field painting and Lyrical Abstraction (Whitney Museum of American Art). His paintings of the 1940s show the influence of Cubism, and in the early 1950s he became associated with Abstract Expressionists including Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning (Annex Galleries). His 'Simple Paintings' of the late 1950s and early 1960s set cloud-like forms of clear, intense colour against a white or off-white ground, and he is linked to the tendency Clement Greenberg called Post-Painterly Abstraction (Wikipedia).

In 1950 MoMA showed him in a 'New Talent' exhibition alongside Drumlevitch and King (MoMA), and the Whitney included him in its annual exhibitions of contemporary painting in 1950, 1952, 1963, 1965 and 1967 (Whitney Museum of American Art). He was represented in New York by the Samuel M. Kootz Gallery (Wikipedia). His work is held by MoMA (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose 'Untitled' (1959) was a gift from Mr and Mrs Samuel Kootz in 1973 (The Met), the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago) and Tate, which owns 'Untitled' (1959) (Tate).

Sources

  1. Wikipedia
  2. The Met, Raymond Parker, Untitled
  3. Whitney Museum of American Art, artist page
  4. MoMA, artist page
  5. Tate, artist page
  6. Tate, 'Untitled', 1959
  7. Art Institute of Chicago, artist page
  8. Annex Galleries, biography
A room in the Joseph Clark Collection hung salon-style: framed paintings, drawings and photographs cover two white walls, with sculptures on a teak sideboard and a white plinth below.
Installation view of the Joseph Clark Collection, including works by Zhang Enli, Tamsin Relly, Glenn Ligon, Louise Bourgeois, Ray Parker, Phyllida Barlow, Bengt Rosenström, Antonio Tarsis, Hugo Glendinning, Tim A Shaw, France-Lise McGurn, Mia Chaplin, Fabian Peake and Yukako Shibata.

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