Red Burner

Label

Look at the painting in terms of individual colors. In other words, instead of simply glancing at the work, select a specific color . . . and take the time to see how it operates across the painting . . . one must enter the painting through the door of a single color. And then, you can understand what my painting is all about. -- Gene Davis

Part of the active abstraction group in Washington, DC, in the 1960s (along with Alma Thomas, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland), Davis focused all his mature work on the potency of pure color and stripes arranged vertically. His paintings are all lively and activate the retina in ways that shift as the viewer’s attention alternates among hues. Davis deliberately sought to diminish the importance of brushwork—the artist’s touch—by elevating the power of both color and shape to carry the weight of meaning for his paintings.

From the 2025 exhibition Always Already: Abstraction in the United States, curated by John Stomberg, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961 Director; Jami Powell, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art; and Amelia Kahl, Barbara C. and Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programing

Exhibition History

Always Already: Abstraction in the United States, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 26,2025.

Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, February 22-September 21, 1993.

Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 3-September 17, 2000.

Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 26,2009-March 15, 2010.

Publication History

Brian Kennedy, Sean Scully: The Art of the Stripe, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2008, ill. p. 64.

Brian P. Kennedy and Emily Shubert Burke, Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2009 p.52, no.28.

Provenance

The artist, until 1985 [his death]; to his wife, Florence C. Davis, 1985; bequeathed to present collection, 1992.

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