Stanley Whitney

This first comprehensive monograph on Stanley Whitney offers an in-depth look at the artist’s unique and intuitive approach to color and space in painting, which employs a dynamic fusion of preordained structure and improvisation. Deriving inspiration from sources as diverse as Sandro Botticelli and Piet Mondrian, free jazz and American quilt-making, Whitney composes in varying scales with vibrant blocks and bars that articulate a chromatic call-and-response within each canvas. In a new essay, Matthew Jeffrey Abrams brings together Whitney’s personal and professional narratives to weave a chronological analysis of the work and the artist’s wider cultural contribution over four decades.