Two Women 1950

Milton Avery painted "Two Women" at an unknown date, in oil, with a kind of casual freedom. He wasn’t afraid to leave things a little raw. Look at the way Avery layers color; it’s all about tone and mood. The blue and purple, for example, give a cool, almost melancholic feel. It's like he’s inviting you to sit with a quiet moment, a pause. See the way he applies the paint? It's not fussy or overly detailed. Each shape seems to exist in its own right, yet they come together to create a scene. There’s a flatness here that’s really interesting. It's like he's flattened the space, creating a dreamlike scene that feels both intimate and distant. Avery’s all about the sensation of seeing, reducing forms to their most essential, much like what Morandi was doing in Italy around the same time. I like that lack of resolution, it's like the painting is always becoming itself.