The American painter Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992), whose very large late paintings are the subject of an enchanting exhibition at Knoedler & Company, was often described in his lifetime as the youngest of the Abstract Expressionist painters of the New York School. He was indeed younger than Pollock, de Kooning and a few other artists in that group, and his paintings were often exhibited with theirs. Yet in neither his art nor his life did Pousette-Dart have much in common with the artists of that group. For one thing, he was never any sort of Expressionist. The bravura gestural style that we associate with Pollock, de Kooning et al. was entirely alien to Pousette-Dart’s sensibility; so was the hard-drinking bohemian lifestyle of the painters who made the Cedar Tavern a favorite destination of art-world groupies. Pousette-Dart’s interest in the social life of the fashionable art world was practically nil. By temperament and conviction he was a family man, and his was a family of artists: His father was a painter and art writer; his mother a writer; and his children, too, have pursued careers in art and music.
more from Hilton Kramer at The New York Observer here.