American painter. He studied at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston from 1964 to 1966 before settling in New York, where he began producing paintings enclosed by aggressively three-dimensional frames that continued to reveal his early training as a sculptor; in many cases the title of the work was displayed in large letters on the frame itself. In the first such pictures he used broad brushwork and generally juxtaposed the image of a human figure with an object in a theatrical or allegorical manner suggesting love, despair or aggression. In Them and Us (1969; New York, MOMA), for example, the Cold War is symbolized by the images of a Soviet fighter aeroplane and an American set in an atmosphere of agitated brushwork. By the 1980s his preference for sparseness and for emblematic imagery led him increasingly towards abstraction, although by continuing to emphasize the association between the picture and its title he remained committed to the role of subject-matter.
Klaus Ottmann
From Grove Art Online
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