The Wave
1969 · Lithograph
composition and sheet: 30 1/8 × 22 1/16" (76.5 × 56.1 cm)
Museum of Modern Art
WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture
Lee Mullican
Artist
PaintingSurrealismStreet ArtRealism
Representation
None documented
2
Institutional Exhibitions
45
Works in Collection
95
Assets Indexed
1
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
90%
Profile Completeness
Cultural Positioning
Movements
- • Surrealism
- • Street Art
- • Realism
- • Figuration
Related Artists
No edges recorded
Influence Graph
No influence edges encoded yet.
Selected Institutional Exhibitions
View all exhibitions →No image
Recent American Acquisitions
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1957
No image
Modern Art in Your Life
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1949
About
Why this artist matters now
Lee Mullican was an American painter and muralist working in abstraction and surrealist-inflected figuration from the 1940s onward. His practice engaged with automatic drawing, biomorphic forms, and gestural mark-making, positioning his work within postwar abstract currents while maintaining a lyrical, often dreamlike sensibility. Mullican's approach bridged European surrealism and American gestural abstraction, with particular attention to the relationship between accident and intention in the painting process.
Source: Marianne Boesky · Trust score: 100% · Updated 1mo ago
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Taste overlap and adjacency
Movement
Surrealism
Medium
Painting
Related Artists
12 in graph
Institutional
Museum Collections
Canonical record
Artworks (45)
View all 45 artworks →
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Images
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Movements and affiliations
Institutional
Representation & Collections
In collection
Museum of Modern Art
New York, US
In collection
Art Institute of Chicago
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