LARRY POONS
Larry Poons is an American abstract painter who was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1937. He studied from 1955 to 1957 at the New England Conservatory of Music with the intent of becoming a professional musician. In 1959, he enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and also studied at the Art Students League of New York.
Having been personally encouraged and tutored in his work by art world legend Barnett Newman, he rose to prominence in the 1960s with his now iconic, famous and influential spot paintings on solid—often brilliantly colored—backgrounds. These paintings convey a sense of movement and energy, and were initially categorized as op art.
Although he exhibited with optical artists in 1965, by 1966 he had moved away from the optical art towards looser and more painterly abstract canvases for which he is now better known and that caused legendary American singer–songwriter Patti Smith to refer to him as "our cowboy Monet".
Poons currently resides primarily in New York City, but also maintains a studio in upstate New York.