Arbery, Gottlieb, Rothko: By the Beach

About the Exhibition

This exhibition addresses the lifelong friendship and artistic exchange between three figures important to American art history: Milton Avery (1885-1965), Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974), and Mark Rothko (1903-1970). It is the first to shed light on how these three artists drew inspiration and supported one another during the summers they spent together each year in Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Some 90 paintings, drawings, prints, and watercolors show their artistic exchange and communal relationship, with many works on public view for the first time in this exhibition. Including works from the 1920s through the 1960s, the exhibition offers an important opportunity to understand these three artists' creative processes and mutual influence. Milton Avery's Black Sea (1959) and Mark Rothko's large-scale color-field paintings in particular are the exhibition's main highlights, revealing their artistic identities.