Thornton Willis

Thornton Willis (born May 25, 1936) is an American abstract painter. He has contributed to the New York School of painting since the late 1960s. Viewed as a member of the Third Generation of American Abstract Expressionists, his work is associated with Abstract Expressionism, Lyrical Abstraction, Process Art,
Postminimalism, Bio-morphic Cubism (a term he coined) and Color Field painting.
Biography
Thornton Willis's father, Willard Willis, was an evangelical preacher in the Church of Christ. Willis spent formative years in Montgomery Alabama, returning to graduate from Tate High School in Pensacola, Florida. After three years in the United States Marine Corps, Thornton Willis studied, under the G.I. Bill, at Auburn University for one year transferring to the University of Southern Mississippi where he graduated with a B.A. in 1962. In the summer of 1964, he enrolled at the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa, for graduate studies and received a teaching assistantship, and his M.A. in 1966. While at the University of Alabama he was befriended by the American football quarterback Joe Namath, met visiting artist Theodoros Stamos, and primarily studied painting with Melville Price, a painter who had shown in New York City with Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning and had been a member of The Club at the Cedar Tavern. During these years, Willis also participated in the Civil Rights Movement including the march from Selma to Montgomery, led by Martin Luther King Jr.
Throughout his painting studies, Thornton Willis became highly influenced by the tenets of Abstract Expressionism embodied in The New York School of painting, including second generation painters such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. His early work was equally informed by the more reductive paintings of Piet Mondrian and Frank Stella. These two polarities, Expressionism and Cubism were the early foundations of his paintings and continue to inform his work to this day.
In 1967 Thornton Willis accepted a teaching position at Wagner College in Staten Island, and moved to New York City. He established his first studio in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. In 1968, he had his first one-person show at the Henri Gallery in Washington, DC. In New York, Willis met fellow painters, Dan Christensen, Jules Olitski, Ken Showell as well as sculptors and installation artists Richard Serra, Alan Saret, and Gordon Matta-Clark, all working out of a process art orientation.
The Slat Paintings
From 1967 to 1973, Thornton Willis worked on a series of paintings now called his “Slat Series” involving a “wet on wet” process working on the floor on large wet unstretched canvas and using rollers with long extension handles to develop striped bands across the entire picture plane. In 1970, Willis was included in the exhibition entitled “Lyrical Abstraction” curated by Larry Aldrich, and the painting from this show, “Wall”, 1969, acrylic on canvas, 96 inches by 114 inches, was originally exhibited at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Some of the other artists connected with Lyrical Abstraction were Victoria Barr, Jake Berthot, Dan Christensen, Ronnie Landfield, Pat Lipsky, John Torreano, Phillip Wofford and Robert Zakanitch. When in 1971, Mr. Aldrich donated this collection to The Whitney Museum of American Art, John Baur, the museum director, mounted a second Lyrical Abstraction exhibition and Willis's painting Wall became part of the Whitney Museum's permanent collection.
The “Slat” series also attracted Bykert Gallery director, Klaus Kertess, and in 1971 Willis joined the Paley and Lowe Gallery, New York City, as part of its original stable of eight artists including, Joan Snyder, Mary Heilmann, Peter Pinchbeck, Herbert Schiffrin, Fred Gudziet, Mike Bakaty, Peter Bradley, and Michael Goldberg who joined later. A “Slat” painting was purchased by William Paley, then Chairman of the Board of CBS, and is now in The Museum of Broadcasting, NYC.
From 1971 to 1972, Willis taught painting at Louisiana State University in New Orleans. He had a one-person show of his “Slat” paintings at the Simonne Stern Gallery, New Orleans in 1970, and at The New Orleans Museum of Fine Art (then The Delgado Museum) in 1971 which also owns a large slat painting. He continued to show with Simonne Stern through 1974.
The Wedge Paintings
After returning to New York City, Willis began his formalist compositions exploring Form and Field ambiguity that led to his “Wedge” series, 1974-1982. During this time he co-founded “Review: Artists on Art” with his wife. He showed his work at the Holly Solomon Gallery, NYC, in 1976, and in 1979 Thornton Willis won a Guggenheim Fellowship for painting. In the same year his work was included in the controversial exhibition “American Painting: The Eighties, a critical interpretation” organized and curated by Barbara Rose. The exhibition opened at the Grey Art Gallery, NYC and traveled first to The Houston Museum of Fine Arts, then to the American Center, Paris, France before traveling around the world as a United States Ambassadorial show to over twenty other countries.
In 1979, Thornton Willis exhibited his “Wedge” Paintings at the 55 Mercer Street Gallery where the work attracted the attention of British collectors, Robin Symes, and Charles and Doris Saatchi. He showed the “Wedge” paintings at the Sidney Janis Gallery, NYC, in 1980 is an exhibition entitled “Seven Young Americans” curated by Sam Hunter which included friend and fellow artist Sean Scully. In 1980 he had a one-person show at the Oscarsson Hood Gallery who would represent the artist until 1986. In 1980 he met the European dealer, Claes Nordenhake, and exhibited his “Wedge” paintings in Malmo, Sweden, Gothenburg, Sweden and Helsinki, Finland and Geneva, Switzerland.
In 1982, Willis began a series of overlapping “wedges’ or “double wedges’ that allowed exploration of the vertical colored bands created where the edges met. “Striped Suit”, 1982, a large double wedge canvas was featured on the cover of Arts Magazine with an essay by Steven Henry Madoff, Looking for Thornton Willis: A Treatise. With the re-opening of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, in 1984, Willis exhibited Red Warrior in An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture. By 1984 the work had changed again as Willis sought a more complex geometry. By 1990 he had gone back to the triangle but this time in an overall grid for which he coined the term “biomorphic cubism”. The "Triangle" paintings would span a decade from 1990-2000.
The Triangle Paintings
In 1991, Willis showed new work at the Andre Emmerich Gallery, NYC, in an exhibition entitled Abstract Painting: the 90’s where art critic Barbara Rose chose to revisit certain painters from the 80s show. A one-person exhibition of large scale Triangle paintings and oil stick on paper followed in 1993, at the Andre Zarre Gallery where the artist employed a tight grid overridden by gesture and a plastic color palette. In the 2001 catalogue essay for Painted in New York City: The Presence of the Past, art critic Robert C. Morgan noted Willis's Abstract Expressionist roots and the newer element of restraint.
In 2005, Willis teamed up with fellow painter, James Little for a two-person show in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at the Sideshow Gallery working with owner-painter, Richard Timperio. Since 2007, Willis has shown with the Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York City, with one-person exhibitions in 2007, 2009 and 2011. Willis has sustained a long-term relationship with art dealer Harris begun in 1980 when she co-founded Oscarsson Hood Gallery, on 57th street.
The Grid Paintings
Shortly after the exhibition entitled Painting: 40 Years,” a retrospective at the Sideshow Gallery in 2007, Willis returned to a rectilinear format. Combining the early "Slat" paintings, with exploration of form and field in his “Wedge” series, he created a body of work he entitled “Lattices” where lines appear to weave forward and back. Michael Feldman documented the transition to this new work in a film, in 2008-09, Portrait of an American Painter In 2009, Willis had a one-person show at the Elizabeth Harris Gallery, with catalog entitled The Lattice Paintings essay, by James Panero of The New Criterion. In his essay, Panero writes, “Ever since his wedge paintings in 1970s, Thornton has played with the density of volumes, the interaction of colors to come forward and recede, and the character of the line.”
Two years later, in 2011, Willis took on form over field where form or volume appear to dominate the line. The resulting images harken to the dense mass of city buildings and maps. In an essay for this new series, Lance Esplund writes: “Those who have followed Willis’s work over the years may see his current series of paintings as a departure from “Slats” of the 1960s, the “Wedges,” or “Fins,” of the 1970s and early ’80s, the triangular facets of recent years, and the “Lattice” paintings from his last show, in 2009, at Elizabeth Harris. But all of these pictures have in common the allover surface plane held in tension, between figure and ground, as an interwoven field. They also share the subject of the urban landscape”
Willis continued to show with Elizabeth Harris, and in April 2013, had a one-person show of new “Step” paintings. The artist included in the show, consisting predominantly of his paintings, several three dimensional painted wall pieces or assemblages. The wall sculptures, starting with a painted canvas base, are built up with layers of found objects and painted wood. Also in April and May 2013, two large paintings by Willis were exhibited at Gagosian Gallery, 980 Madison, New York, in the exhibition entitled, “Works of the Jenney Archive.”
Selected museum and public collections
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C
Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Ct.
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
Carnegie Museums, Pittsburgh, PA
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana
Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University
The Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR
Museum of Broadcasting, NYC
The Power Institute of Fine Arts, Sydney, Australia
The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK
Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR
Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan UT
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
The Herb and Dorothy Vogel Collection, New York, NY
Awards
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Painting Fellowship, 2001
Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Fellowship, 1991
National Endowment for the Arts, Printmaking Fellowship, 1984
National Endowment for the Arts, Painting Fellowship, 1980
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Painting Fellowship, 1979
Selected Books and Catalogues
Tom Armstrong, A singular Vision: Architecture Art Landscape, Copyright 2011, Frontise-piece pp. 1, 207 Printed by Quantuck Lane Press, NY, Distributed by W.W. Norton and Company, NY
Exhibition Catalogue, Thornton Willis, copyright 2011, Elizabeth Harris Gallery, essay copyright 2011 Lance Esplund
Exhibition Catalogue, Thornton Willis: The Lattice Paintings, copyright 2009, Elizabeth Harris Gallery, essay copyright 2009 James Panero
The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States, produced by the National Endowment for the Arts, Washington DC. repro. p. 79
Peter Bellamy, The Artist Project: Portraits of the Real Art World / New Artists 1981-1990, published by IN Publishing New York, New York, 1991 p. 240
The Phillips Collection, A Summary Catalogue, 1985 repro. p. 251
Carrier, David, “The Aesthete in the City; The Philosophy and Practice of American Abstract Painting in the 1980s,” The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park Pennsylvania, 1994, Chapters 10 (p188) and 13 (p 225),
Artists of the ‘80’s: Selected works from the Maslow Collection, published by the Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes College, Wilkes-Barre, PA., 1989, Frontispiece (color), pp. 74-75
C.E. Licka, Thornton Willis’ Abstract Syntax, Thornton Willis Recent Work: Paintings and Drawings, a catalogue, published by the University of Southern Mississippi, 1985, Copyrights, on the occasion of the University of Southern Mississippi's 75th Anniversary, intro. by Chairman William C. Baggett Jr.
David Carrier, Theoretical Perspectives on the Arts, Sciences and Technology, Part II: Postmodernist Art Criticism, Leonardo, Vol. 18, No.2, 1985, repro. 109, p. 112
Kynaston McShine, An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, copyright 1984 by Museum of Modern Art, New York, Library of Congress Catalog repros. pp. 322–323
Joseph Masheck, “Historical Present: Essays of the 1970s,” Contemporary American Art Critics, No. 3, edited by Donald Kuspit, UMI Research Press, Michigan, 1984, Chapter 22, pp249–257, “Thornton Willis and Abstract Identity”
Exhibition catalogue, ARS: 83 Helsinki, The Art Museum of the Ateneum, 1983, repro. pp. 190–191
Exhibition Catalogue, Donald Kuspit and Fernando Pernes, LIS ’81: Lisbon international Show, International Exhibition of Drawings, published by Direccao, 1982 repros. p. 427
Exhibition Catalogue, Georgia Coopersmith, 20th Anniversary Exhibition of the Vogel Collection, published by the Brainerd Art Gallery, Potsdam, NY. 1982, repro., unpaginated.
Exhibition catalogue, Thomas W. Leavitt and Anita Feldman, Painting Up Front, published by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca NY. , . Statement and repro, unpaginated
RE-VIEW: Artists on Art Magazine, Vol. II and III, no. 1, June 1979 , repros. pp. 46-51
RE-VIEW: Artists on Art Magazine, Vol. 1, no. 1, January 1978, pp. 53-57.
Exhibition catalogue, Lyrical Abstraction, published by the Whitney Museum of American Arts, New York, NY. . 1971
Exhibition catalogue, Richard Lanier, New Work: New York, published by the American Federation of Arts, New York, New York, Library of Congress Card no. , . 1970
Selected Sources
James Panero “Gallery Chronicle” The New Criterion, 2012, Volume 30,Number 6, p 52
James Panero “Gallery Chronicle” The New Criterion, 2011, Volume 29, Number 6, p 57
Lilly Wei, “Thornton Willis at Elizabeth Harris” Exhibition Reviews, “Art in America” September 2009 #08 p 149
Tom McCormick, Melville Price: Works from the Sixties, Tom McCormick Gallery, Copyright 2009, Color Reproduction, essay, pp. 14–15
James Panero, Pilgrim's Process, Catalogue Essay, Thornton Willis: The Lattice Paintings, March 2009
Lance Esplund, “The Met’s Memorable Year”, The New York Sun, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2008, Arts & Letters, p 21
James Panero, Critics Notebook, “ Comeback Kid”, Art & Antiques, Dec. 2007, No. 12, pp. 110–114 color reproductions.
Lance Esplund, “A Show of Painterly Swagger”, The New York Sun, Nov. 8, 2007, Vol. 123, No. 146, p 22
James Panero, Gallery Chronicle, The New Criterion, 2007, Vol. 26, No. 3 pp. 61–62
Jed Perl, “How The Art World Lost its Mind to Money: Laissez-Faire Aesthetics,” The New Republic, Feb 5, 2007
John Goodrich, Gallery Going “Black & White and Big All Over”, The New York Sun, December 14, 2006
Channing Joseph, Arts & Letters, “Geometry In Color,” page 1 color reproduction, Gallery-Going, “Making a Quantum Comeback” December 19, 2006 p 13
Naves, Mario, “A Shared Aesthetic and Goal, Raising the Bar at the Sideshow”, New York Observer, April 18, 2005 p 8
Maine, Stephen, “Dateline Brooklyn, Artnet, April 2005
La Rocca, Ben, “Thornton Willis and James Little”, The Brooklyn Rail, April 2005
Lieb, Vered, “Thornton Willis and James Little: Raising the Bar”, N.Y., 2005
Arts Magazine, Vol. 10, No 3/4, p71, March/April 2005
Lieb, Vered, “Thornton Willis and James Little”, Abstract Art on Line, April 2005
Panero, James, “Gallery Chronicles”, The New Criterion, May 2005, Vol 23, no 9, p50
Walentini, Joseph, “”Reviews: Thornton Willis and James Little”, AbstractArtonLine, May 2005
Perl, Jed, “On Art: Unity and Variety”, The New Republic, Vol. 228, No 3, Issue 4593, Jan. 27, 2003
Kaufman, Leslie, “The Lost Legacy of Stewart Hitch”, The New York Times, The City, Section 14, Feb.2, 2003
Morgan, Robert C., “Painted in New York City: The Presence of the Past”, catalog essay published by Hofstra University for “Painted In New York City”, Jan. 2001
Lieb, Vered, “The Art of Absolute Desire”, N.Y. Arts Magazine, 1999, Vol. 4, No. 8, pp50–1
Rosenthal, Deborah, “Abstract Tendencies”, Rider University Press, 1997
Scott, Sue, “Reviews: New York”, ARTnews, Feb. 1994, p143
Lloyd W., Ann, “Review of Exhibitions”, Art in America, May 1994, p112
Perl, Jed, “Code Name Painting” The New Criterion, Dec. 1993, Vol.12 No 4
Lieb, Vered, “Objective Spirit: Thornton Willis”, Arts Magazine, Nov.1986
Heartney, Eleanor, “Thornton Willis at Oscarsson Hood”, ARTnews, 1985
Gaugh, Harry T., “Franz Kline: The Man and the Myth”, ARTnews, Dec. 1985
Carrier, David, “Betwixt and Between Illusion and Literality: Thornton Willis’ Recent Paintings”, p194, Nov. 1984
Rosenthal, Deborah, “First Underground Show”, Art in America, Nov. 1984, pp157–8
Madoff, Steven, “Looking for Thornton Willis: A Treatise”, Arts Magazine, March 1983, cover and pp16–118
Murray, Jesse, Flash Art, Jan. 1981
Masheck, Joseph, “Abstract Identity: Thornton Willis”, Oct. 1981, pp126–131, reproductions pp. 126, 129, 130
Cornu, Daniel, “La Peinture Abstraite en Question”, Tribune De Geneve, Dec. 16, 1980, p27
Parks, Addison, Arts Magazine, Dec. 1980, p53
Hilton Kramer, Seven Young Americans, The New York Times, April 18, 1980, Section C, p. 18
Ratcliff, Carter, “55 Mercer St. Show”, Art in America, March 1980, p116
Frackman, Noel, “The Paintings of Thornton Willis”, Arts Magazine, Nov.1980, pp58–60
Feldman, Anita, “Space and Subjectivity”, Artforum, Sept. 1979, pp49–53
Boyce, David, “Interview with Thornton Willis”, Arts Magazine, Nov. 1979, p116
References
Online References
Thornton Willis website: http://www.thorntonwillis.com/home.shtml
James Kalm, YouTube, October 2007, “ Thornton Willis Opening at Sideshow” http://blip.tv/file/447777
Brian Sherwin, myartspace.com, contributing editor: http://www.myartspace.com/blog/2007/09/art-space-talk-thornton-willis.html
Jed Perl, The New Republic, Feb 5, 2007: http://www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/07/wf021407.htm
Michael Feldman, “Portrait of an American Painter" film, 2008-09: http://www.thorntonwillis.com/media.shtml
Joanne Mattera, “Joanne Mattera Art Blog” 2009 review “Color-Time-Space” http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/2009/10/color-time-space-at-lohin-geduld.html
Joanne Mattera, “Joanne Mattera Art Blog” 2009 review Thornton Willis at Elizabeth Harris Gallery http://joannemattera.blogspot.com/2009/04/thornton-willis-at-elizabeth-harris.html
Steven Alexander, “Seven Alexander Journal” 2009 review “Color-Time-Space” http://stevenalexanderjournal.blogspot.com/2009/10/color-time-space-at-lohin-geduld-janet.html
Steven Alexander, “Steven Alexander Journal” 2009 review Thornton Wilis at Elizabeth Harris Gallery http://stevenalexanderjournal.blogspot.com/2009/03/thornton-willis-at-elizabeth-harris.html
Leaves of Glass, 2009 “Needing some Color-Time-Space” http://leavesofglass.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html
Thomas B. Harrison, ‘Southern Abstraction’ is a compelling view of a provocative art form (gallery), Al.com, June 1, 2012 http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2012/06/southern_abstraction_is_a_comp.html
Structural Abstraction: Paintings by Thornton Willis, Alabama.travel, June 11, 2012 http://www.alabama.travel/events/structural_abstraction_paintings_by_thornton_willi
New York Artist, UA alum to show at Sarah Moody gallery, AL.com, September 24, 2012 http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2012/09/new_york_artist_ua_alum_to_sho.html
New York Artist to Show Work at UA Gallery, University of Alabama News, September 24, 2012 http://uanews.ua.edu/2012/09/new-york-artist-to-show-work-at-ua-gallery/
Thornton Willis show card by UA Dept. of Art & Art History, September 27, 2012 https://www.flickr.com/photos/uaart/8048336805/
Thornton Willis @ The Sarah Moody Gallery by Paul Behnke, Structure and Imagery September 30, 2012 http://structureandimagery.blogspot.com/2012/09/thornton-willis-sarah-moody-gallery.html
Accolades for Oct. 1, 2012, The University of Alabama, October 1, 2012 http://dialog.ua.edu/2012/10/accolades-for-oct-1-2012/
More about Thornton Willis, The University of Alabama, October 9, 2012 http://art.ua.edu/site/more-about-thornton-willis/
James Panero, "Studio Visit: Thornton Supreme Fiction", January 8, 2013 http://www.supremefiction.com/theidea/2013/01/studio-visit-thornton-willis.html
James Panero, "Studio Visit: Thornton Willis", The New Criterion, January 9, 2013 http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/Studio-visit--Thornton-Willis-7007
Geoform interview http://geoform.net/interviews/an-interview-with-artist-thornton-willis/
1936 births
Living people
20th-century American painters
American male painters
21st-century American painters
Abstract expressionist artists
Modern painters
20th-century American male artists