GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Myron Stout is a Texas native who claimed a significant spot in the arena of post-war New York abstract art. A native of Denton, he studied at North Texas State University and taught briefly in San Antonio. He earned a Master's Degree at Columbia University Teacher's College and moved on a permanent basis to New York in 1937. Until 1950 he split his time between New York and Provincetown, where he then lived year-round.
Stout is best known for his small to moderate-scaled black and white paintings and very small charcoal, conté crayon, and graphite drawings, each with astonishingly rich surfaces and deceptively simple forms. His images are distilled and highly concentrated elemental shapes or structures. His process can best be described as meticulous, each work labored over on and off for months or even years. Stout achieved, thereby, a powerful sense of density or weight, a tension between form and void, an uncanny spatial ambiguity.
Untitled was painted in the 1950s, years during which Stout studied in the summers at Hans Hofmann's school in Provincetown. The painting's vibrant color and sense of directional intensity or energy surely reveals Hofmann's impact. There is a tremendous optical vibration resulting from Stout's careful choice of color, ranging from yellow to pale orange to saturated orange or near red to an uncommon hot pink. The small blocks of blue amplify the optical vibration and reinforce the sense of upward flow or motion. Despite the clear influence of Hofmann, Stout seems never to have been tempted by the gestural expressionism of many of his contemporary abstract colleagues.
Adapted from
DMA label copy
NOTES
c. 1950
From Getty: Note: Abstract painter's work formed a bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. His mature works often eliminated or radically reduced the use of color in his renderings of geometric forms. He showed with the Stable Gallery and the Hansa Gallery in New York. He was awarded a Guggenheim grant in 1969. In 1977 a retrospective was mounted at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, and the Carnegie Institute Museum of Art.
Object File Reviewed
Checked Piction
born Denton, TX died Chatham, MA worked in Provincetown, MA and New York San Antonio
college at North Texas State University (Denton, TX)
ES- cut notes section and dropped below crossline to fix display problem. (8/7/2019)
Artist/designers
Stout, Myron (American, 1908-1987)
Cultures
Geography
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
From 2003: Dallas Museum of Art, General Acquisitions Fund
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
WEB RESOURCES
- Smithsonian Archives of American Art~Read an oral history interview with Myron Stout from 1984.
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General Description
Myron Stout is a Texas native who claimed a significant spot in the arena of post-war New York abstract art. A native of Denton, he studied at North Texas State University and taught briefly in San Antonio. He earned a Master's Degree at Columbia University Teacher's College and moved on a permanent basis to New York in 1937. Until 1950 he split his time between New York and Provincetown, where he then lived year-round.
Stout is best known for his small to moderate-scaled black and white paintings and very small charcoal, conté crayon, and graphite drawings, each with astonishingly rich surfaces and deceptively simple forms. His images are distilled and highly concentrated elemental shapes or structures. His process can best be described as meticulous, each work labored over on and off for months or even years. Stout achieved, thereby, a powerful sense of density or weight, a tension between form and void, an uncanny spatial ambiguity.
Untitled was painted in the 1950s, years during which Stout studied in the summers at Hans Hofmann's school in Provincetown. The painting's vibrant color and sense of directional intensity or energy surely reveals Hofmann's impact. There is a tremendous optical vibration resulting from Stout's careful choice of color, ranging from yellow to pale orange to saturated orange or near red to an uncommon hot pink. The small blocks of blue amplify the optical vibration and reinforce the sense of upward flow or motion. Despite the clear influence of Hofmann, Stout seems never to have been tempted by the gestural expressionism of many of his contemporary abstract colleagues.
Adapted from
DMA label copy
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
Notes
c. 1950
From Getty: Note: Abstract painter's work formed a bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. His mature works often eliminated or radically reduced the use of color in his renderings of geometric forms. He showed with the Stable Gallery and the Hansa Gallery in New York. He was awarded a Guggenheim grant in 1969. In 1977 a retrospective was mounted at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, and the Carnegie Institute Museum of Art.
Object File Reviewed
Checked Piction
born Denton, TX died Chatham, MA worked in Provincetown, MA and New York San Antonio
college at North Texas State University (Denton, TX)
ES- cut notes section and dropped below crossline to fix display problem. (8/7/2019)
Artist/designers
Stout, Myron (American, 1908-1987)
Cultures
Geography
Process/materials
Historical periods
Individuals
Subject terms
RELATED OBJECTS
PROVENANCE
From 2003: Dallas Museum of Art, General Acquisitions Fund
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
rules
Apply To
Objects
number
Equals
2003.23
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