About This Artwork

James Bishop
American, born 1927

Untitled, 1980

Oil on canvas
193 x 193 cm (76 x 76 in.)
Through prior bequest of Marguerita S. Ritman; Flora Mayer Witkowsky, Ada S. Garrett, Max V. Kohnstamm, Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan, and Laura Slobe Memorial prize funds; restricted gift of Judith Neisser., 2007.67

© James Bishop. Annemarie Verna Gallery.

James Bishop is an American artist who has lived in France since 1958. His exquisitely rendered, relatively rare paintings—which the American poet and art critic John Ashberry once called “part air, part architecture”—combine European and American traditions of postwar art. Bishop’s abstraction is grounded by oblique references to geometry, grids, and architectural structures. In the mid-1960s, he began pouring thinned oil paint onto his canvases and tilting them to layer color without a paintbrush, often leaving areas of white, primed canvas visible to balance such applications of color. Bishop’s paintings are roughly six feet square, reflecting the proportions of his own body.