Description:

Richard Pousette-Dart
New York, Minnesota, (1916 - 1992)
Obelisk, ca. 1980
ink on paper
Signed and dated verso.

Biography from the Archives of askART: Richard Pousette-Dart was born in 1916 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He began drawing and painting when he was eight. His father was Nathaniel Pousette, painter and writer on art and artists, and his mother was Flora Louise Dart, poet and musician. They hyphenated their surnames when they married to show they respected each other as equals. Richard grew up in Valhalla, in Westchester County, New York. His father did not believe in formal art lessons, and Richard spent hours sitting in his father's attic studio and watching his father paint. Art was only one of the many interests he had as a child, and he acquired them all through active involvement.

In 1936 Pousette-Dart entered Bard College, but in rebellion against formal education, he only stayed a matter of months when he left to pursue his art activity in New York City. He started out as a sculptor. Then he supported himself by doing lettering for the sculptor Paul Manship, and then for two years as secretary and bookkeeper to a man who retouched colored photographs. At night he worked on his own sculpture, painting and drawing; he also learned from his own direct experience with many works of art in museums, etc.

In 1939, having realized that he was "consumed by art," Pousette-Dart quit his job, thereby embarking upon years of financial struggle that did not end until the mid-1960s, when his work began to sell. At the beginning of the 1940s he was forced to give up sculpture, because of the expense. He became part of what became known as the New York School, but he never felt the camaraderie of a Paris cafe scene; instead he was belligerent about his aloneness.

In 1946 he and Evelyn Gracey were married; in 1947 their daughter Joanna, who grew up to be a painter, was born, and in 1952 their son Jonathan was born. Pousette-Dart had spent fourteen years painting in New York City. At the age of thirty-four he moved with his family to a part of Rockland County, which is rural and mountainous. He died in 1992.


Written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.

Sources include:
"Pousette-Dart's Windows into the Unknowing" by Judith Higgins in ARTnews,January 1987

  • Dimensions: 5"H x 3"W (sight) 11"H x 9"W (frame)
  • Medium: ink on paper

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