Biography
GENE DAVIS
1920 - 1985
Born and died: Washington, DC
Background:
1939-49sportswriter and reporter/novelist & poet
1945-49White House correspondent for Transradio Press
1949-60writer/editor for American Automobile Association
1949begins painting, influenced by works of Paul Klee
and Abstract Expressionism
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1959Jefferson Place Gallery, Washington, DC
1965Gene Davis: First New York Exhibition, Poindexter
Gallery, New York, NY
Gene Davis: Washington Artists Exhibition No. 21, Corcoran
Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
1966Gene Davis: Selected Paintings, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
1967Gene Davis: Recent Paintings, Hayden Gallery, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Sonata for Three Rooms, Jefferson Place Gallery, Washington, DC
Gene Davis: New Paintings, Fischbach Gallery, New York, NY
Gene Davis: Bilder 1964-1967, Galerie Ricke, Cologne, Germany
1968Gene Davis, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
and Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, DC
1970Gene Davis: The Early Paintings, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
1972Paintings 1969-71, Utah Museum of Fine Art: University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
Paintings by Gene Davis, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE
Gene Davis, Dunkelman Gallery, Toronto, Canada
1975Gene Davis: Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Houston, TX
1977Gene Davis: Rectangle Paintings, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Gene Davis: 1949-1960, Max Protech Gallery, Washington, DC
1978-79Gene Davis: The Elemental Stripe, Early and Late,
Fischbach Gallery, New York, NY
Gene Davis: Recent Paintings (1970-78), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN,
traveling to: Dayton Art Institute, Dayton OH; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
1981Gene Davis, The Stripe: Variations, 1959-1981, McIntosh /Drysdale Gallery, Washington, DC
1982Gene Davis, Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY
Gene Davis: Thirty Years of Drawing, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
1983Gene Davis: Recent Paintings, Middendorf/Lane Gallery, Washington, DC
Gene Davis: Recent Paintings and Drawings, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE
Child and Man: A Collaboration, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC
1984Gene Davis: The Random and the Ordered, U.M.K.C. Gallery of Art, Kansas City, MO
1985Gene Davis: Drawings, The Tampa Museum, Tampa, Florida,
1986Gene Davis: Focus 1960-1964,Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY
1987Gene Davis: A Memorial Exhibition , National Museum of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Gene Davis: Selected Works 1960-1965 ,Pence Gallery, Santa Monica, CA,
Homage to Gene Davis, Hokim Gallery, Bay Harbor Islands, Florida.
1988Gene Davis: A Survey, Charles Cowles Gallery, New York
1990Gene Davis: Drawings 1952-1982 Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY
1995Gene Davis in Black and White: Drawings From the Fifties and Eighties
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
1997Works from the Estate of the Artist, Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC
2001Works from Estate of Gene Davis, Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC
2003Gene Davis, Paintings and Drawings from the Estate of the Artist,
Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC
2004Gene Davis, Color: Works from the Estate of the Artist,
Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC
2005Gene Davis: Stripe Paintings, Charles Cowles Gallery, NY, NY
2006Gene Daivs: Three Decades, Charles Cowles Gallery, NY, NY
2007Seleceted Works from the Estate of Gene Davis, Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC
Gene Davis: Interval, The Kreeger Museum, Washington, DC
Gene Davis, Charles Cowles Gallery, NY, NY
2008Gene Davis: On Paper, Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC
2010Gene Davis: Cool / Works from the Artist's Cooler Palette, Marsha Mateyka Gallery
2012Gene Davis: Paintings and Drawings from the Estate of the Artist, Marsha Mateyka Gallery
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
1960'sPost Painterly Abstraction, Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, traveling to: Walker
Art Center, Exhibitions: Minneapolis, MN; Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
The Responsive Eye, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, traveling to:
The St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA;
Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, Pasadena, CA; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
Washington Color Painters, Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, DC, traveling to:
Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas, Austin, TX;
Art Gallery, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis
University, Waltham, MA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Colorists: 1950-1965, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Two Decades of American Painting, organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY:
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan;
Lalit Kala Gallery, New Delhi, India; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia;
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
30th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Painting, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
The 1960's, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Large Scale American Paintings, The Jewish Museum, New York , NY
Gene Davis, Robert Irwin Richard Smith, The Jewish Museum, New York, NY
1970'sWashington: Twenty Years, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
The Structure of Color, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Color Filed Painting to Post-Color Field Abstraction: Art for the '70's, Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
Within the Decade: Selections from the Guggenheim Permanent Collection, The Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Richard Brown Baker Collects, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
The William C. Seitz Memorial Collection, The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
1980'sAmerican Painting of the Sixties and Seventies: The Real/The Ideal/The Fantastic:
Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts,
Montgomery, AL. traveling to: Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE; Museum of Fine Arts of St.
Petersburg, FL; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Colorado Spring Fine Arts Center,
Colorado Spring, CO; Sierra Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV
American Drawings in Black and White: 1970-1980, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Neon Fronts: Luminous Art for the Urban Landscape, organized by the Washington Project for
the Art, Washington, DC
Viewpoint '81, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI
Contemporary Art in Detroit Collections, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Thirty Painters: Given and Promised, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Recent Trends in Collecting, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC
Abstractions from the Phillips Collections, Fenwick Library Gallery, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Selections from the Collection of the Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., Nassau County Museum of
Fine Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY
The Window in Twentieth Century Art, Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase,
traveling to: Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX
2000At the Threshold of the Visible: Miniscule and Small-Scale Art, 1964-1966, Herbert F.Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University,
Ithaca, NY; traveling to Decker Galleries, Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Art Gallery of
Windsor, Ontario, Canada; Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia, Beach; Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA;
Edmonton Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA.
2001Art at Work: Forty Years of the Chase Manhattan Collection, Queens Museum of Art, NY
2002Modernism and Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Museum, The Art Museum at Florida International University,
Miami, FL; traveling to Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, NY;
Allentown Art Museum,PA; First Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN; Worcester Art Museum, MA; National Academy
Museum, NY, NY; Des Moines Art Center, IA; Muskegon Museum of Art, MI.
2003Minimalism and After II: Acquisitions, DaimlerChrysler Contemporary, Berlin, Germany
2004On The Edge: Contemporary Art from the DaimlerChrysler Collection, Museum fur Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe, Germany;
traveling to: The Detroit Institute of Arts; Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa; South African National Gallery, Cape Town.
2004Painting by Design, Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
2005Extreme Abstraction, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Florian Sundheimer Kunsthandel, Munich, Germany
2008Three American Masters: Sam Gilliam, Gene Davis, Nathan Oliveira. Marsha Mateyka Gallery, Washington, DC
Color as Field, Denver Art Museum, traveling to: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; First Center for the
Visual Arts, Nashville, TN
2009The Washington Color Painters, Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD
Shaping Reality: Geometric Abstraction after 1960, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
2010Catalyst: 35 Years of Washington Project for the Arts, American University Art Museum, Katzen Center, Washington, DC
color fields, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin Germany
Washington Color and Light, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
2011"Drawing: LC Armstrong, Gene Davis, Christopher French, Jae Ko, Nathan Oliveira, William T. Wiley, Nancy Wolf",
Marsha Mateyka Gallery Washington, DC
SELECTED MUSEUM COLLECTIONS:
Akron Art Institute, Akron, OH
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, MO
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Museum of Art Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
J.B. Speed Museum, Louisville, KT
McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, TX
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Milwaukee Art Center, Milwaukee, WI
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Norton Simon museum of Art, Pasadena, CA
The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
Tate Gallery, London, England
Utah Museum of Fine Art, Salt Kale City, Utah
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT