Large John Opper American Abstract Expressionist Oil Painting 1956

John Opper (1908–1994)

Oil on canvas 

Untitled

Expressionist figural landscape

1956

Hand signed John Opper '56 on Verso

Dimensions: 30 x 36 inches. Overall framed size is 41 x 35 inches

A similar, smaller, 1958 work from Washburn Gallery sold at Rago in 2021

John Opper (1908–1994)
Abstract Expressionist Painter | New York School | American Abstract Artists
John Opper was one of the most distinctive voices of postwar American abstraction — a founding member of American Abstract Artists, a peer of the New York School, and a painter whose luminous, color-saturated canvases place him firmly in the tradition of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, among others.
Early Life and Training
Born John Samuel Opper on October 29, 1908, in Chicago, Illinois, he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where he took Saturday art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art before going on to study at the Cleveland School of Art, Case Western Reserve University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He later earned a Master of Arts degree (1942) and a doctorate (1952) from Columbia University. WikipediaSmithsonian Institution
Hans Hofmann and the Road to Abstraction
Opper moved to New York City in 1933 and studied with Hans Hofmann from 1935 to 1936 at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts. The experience was transformative. At Hofmann's school, he met fellow artists Wilfrid Zogbaum, Giorgio Cavallon, Byron Browne, Rosalind Bengelsdorf, and George McNeil, with whom he shared a studio. These connections placed Opper at the very center of the emerging American modernist movement, alongside artists who would go on to define the New York School. Smithsonian Institution1stdibs
American Abstract Artists and the WPA
In 1936, Opper became a founding member of American Abstract Artists, a group formed by New York artists to promote and exhibit a style of art that was then derided by critics and shunned by collectors. The group's inaugural exhibition opened in 1937 at the Squibb Gallery in New York City. That same year, Opper joined the WPA Federal Art Project easel program and began painting in what he described as a transformed Cubist style. WikipediaInvaluable
The New York School and the Cedar Bar Circle
Opper was not a peripheral figure — he was woven into the social and artistic fabric of the New York School at its most vital. During his years teaching outside New York City, he made frequent trips back, gathering with friends such as Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Grace Hartigan, and Willem de Kooning at the Cedar Bar. At the Pratt Institute, where he taught in the evenings, he was in the company of leading New York artists including Franz Kline and Tony Smith. When Mark Rothko received his famous Four Seasons restaurant commission, it was Opper who suggested Rothko use the empty gym in their shared building — which Rothko did. Nyartbeat + 2
Gallery Representation and Exhibition History
Opper's gallery career reads as a map of the most important Abstract Expressionist venues in New York. In 1955, he was the last in a celebrated series of Abstract Expressionist artists to be given a solo exhibition at the Egan Gallery — a gallery that had previously shown de Kooning, Franz Kline, and other first-generation Abstract Expressionists. In 1959, Eleanor Ward invited him to show at the Stable Gallery. Beginning in 1966, Opper began a long association with the Grace Borgenicht Gallery that lasted into the 1990s, showing there regularly through 1986. In his later career, his estate has been represented by Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, which has mounted multiple solo exhibitions of his work. Wikipedia + 2
Style and Artistic Evolution
Opper transitioned from semi-abstract paintings in the late 1930s to fully abstract ones in the 1950s, becoming known for his handling of color and his ability to create dramatic intensity on the picture plane by means of juxtaposed, more-or-less rectangular areas of color. He became known as an Abstract Expressionist, a painter of large canvases in which vertical bands of varying widths pulsed with color. His gesture was controlled, yet dynamic; his overlays of color luminous and tactile. During the 1960s, his work shifted further toward Color Field painting — his abstract style was influenced by both Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting — with critics noting "abstract seas of luminous color" in his compositions. Whitney Museum of American Art + 2
In his own words: "I orchestrate color, line, and shape. My whole purpose is to produce an aesthetic response." And of his style: "The whole is the sum of its parts. That's what my school of abstract art is about — a school that evolved from nature, not conceptual, not geometric, not hard-edged. It's only art."
Teaching Career
Opper taught at Columbia University, Pratt Institute, and held his longest tenure at New York University, where he was a member of the art department faculty from 1957 until his retirement in 1974. He also taught at the University of Wyoming, the University of Alabama, and the University of North Carolina. Smithsonian Institution
Awards and Honors
Among his awards are the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1969), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1974), and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Jimmy Ernst Award (1993). Cavaliergalleries
Museum Collections
John Opper's paintings are held in the permanent collections of: the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; the Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, Florida, among others.
Legacy
John Opper died in New York City on October 4, 1994. His papers are held in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. He is buried at Green River Cemetery in the Hamptons — the same cemetery where Jackson Pollock is buried — a fitting final resting place for one of the true insiders of postwar American abstraction. His paintings continue to be exhibited and collected as essential documents of the New York School and the Abstract Expressionist movement.