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Untitled

William BaziotesWW-1942-155994

1942·Watercolor, opaque watercolor, and black ink on board·9 3/8 × 12 7/8 in. (23.8 × 32.7 cm)

Gift of Ethel Baziotes, in honor of William S. Lieberman and in memory of Jorge Michel, 1999

Catalogue

Year: 1942
Medium: Watercolor, opaque watercolor, and black ink on board
Dimensions: 9 3/8 × 12 7/8 in. (23.8 × 32.7 cm)
Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Artist: William Baziotes

Artist

William Baziotes

Painting

William Baziotes was an American abstract painter whose biomorphic forms emerged from automatic drawing and a sustained engagement with Surrealist psychology. Working primarily in oil on canvas from the 1940s until his death in 1963, he developed a vocabulary of floating, organic shapes that suggest marine life and primordial landscapes without representing them directly. His practice bridged the gestural abstraction of the New York School with a dreamlike, introspective sensibility rooted in chance and the unconscious. Baziotes' soft, translucent color fields and ambiguous figural elements established him as a distinctive voice in postwar American abstraction.

New York, NY, USA

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