Stanley Whitney stands among today’s most important abstract painters. Drawing upon influences ranging from European art history to experimental jazz, he is deeply attuned to the complexities of colour. Raised in a small African American community in Pennsylvania, he moved to New York during the 1960s, where the city and its art scene fuelled his imagination. It was not until a trip to Rome and Egypt during the 1990s, however, that his art began to assume its current form, defined by architectural blocks of colour and thin horizontal bands. Whitney paints with gestural, intuitive brushwork, allowing light and movement to seep through his structures.
