Gene Davis

Gene Davis was one of Washington, DC’s most influential and successful artists, best known for his paintings of vertical stripes. The Kreeger Museum will present a timely and extensive exhibition about the artist’s use of interval in his stripe paintings, micro-paintings and works on paper. The exhibition is co-curated by Andrea Pollan and Jean Lawlor Cohen and will include a co-authored four-color catalog.

Davis worked during the heyday of the 1960s Color Field, Washington Color School and Minimalist movements, yet his work provides a different kind of visual experience. Davis uses stripes as events. The intervals between the variously colored stripes incorporate both space and time. Color plays a key role as it adds a sometimes jazzy or syncopated rhythm in some works and a more restrained and diffused tempo in others. The exhibition’s co-curators, Jean Lawlor Cohen and Andrea Pollan, examine the inherent and varied musicality in the works through a focused presentation of works from 1960 to 1985.

GENE DAVIS: INTERVAL is an integral part of ColorField remix, a citywide project, spanning the peak of the spring and summer of 2007, celebrating the many legacies of the generation of Color Field and Washington Color School artists.

Gene Davis
INTERVAL