Oli Sihvonen

Oli Sihvonen

Presented by David Richard Gallery

Oli Sihvonen, an abstract hard-edge painter, spent his career studying the interaction of geometric shapes, surfaces and the adjacency of colors and how those combinations influence visual perception. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and after World War II studied at Black Mountain College where Josef Albers was a major influence and source of inspiration. After Black Mountain he lived in New Mexico and then painted murals in Mexico for a year. Sihvonen moved back east to Washington, D.C. and New York, teaching at Hunter College and Cooper Union. He returned to New Mexico in the late 1950s, inspired by the light, serenity and heroic landscapes, he painted his large canvases and diptychs in Taos. During the New Mexico years, his career took off on the east coast with his paintings included in seminal exhibitions such as Geometric Abstraction In America, 1962, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Formalists, 1963, The Washington Museum of Contemporary Art, Washington, D.C.; and the legendary Responsive Eye in 1965 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, with the latter also purchasing one of Sihvonen’s Elipse paintings for their permanent collection. His artwork was featured in exhibitions at Betty Parson’s and a solo show at the Stable Gallery. Sihvonen returned to New York in 1967 where he continued to explore geometry and optical effects in painting and their impact on visual perception.

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