Avery, Gottlieb & Rothko : By the Sea

A stunning volume illuminating the artistic exchange between three seminal American artists—Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko. This groundbreaking book underscores the lasting significance of the summers they spent together by the sea in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the 1930s and 1940s.

Milton Avery, a modernist painter at work in the first half of the twentieth century, is rarely linked to Adolph Gottlieb or Mark Rothko, who were twenty years younger and would become associated with the New York School in the 1950s. While Avery consistently drew inspiration from the visible world, Gottlieb and Rothko invented abstract pictorial languages all their own. Despite these differences, they were a tight-knit trio whose camaraderie and mutual love of the ocean had lasting impact on their work.

This pioneering volume traces their friendship from 1932, when they first summered together on Cape Ann, through the crystallization of their ideas in the 1940s, to the deeply centering decades that followed, when all three created the mature, independent painting styles for which they are best known. This late work, each in its own way, is indebted to the time the artists spent together on the rocky coast and sandy beaches of Cape Ann. Contributions by leading scholars and family members enrich this unique exploration of artistic friendship and its bearing on the work of three of the twentieth century’s most celebrated artists.

Eliza Rathbone is chief curator emerita of The Phillips Collection.