Spheres of AbEx - Heather James Fine Art

JOHN LITTLE (1907-1984) was born in Sanford, Alabama. He left homewhen only 14 to study art in Buffalo, NY, at the Fine Arts Academy. In 1933,Little enrolled at the Art Students League studying under George Grosz.Four years later, at the age of 30, he began studies with Hans Hofmann,both in New York and Provincetown. This marked his move towardsabstraction and his serious engagement as a painter. After service in theNavy during WWII Little returned to New York, moving into Hofmann’s 8thStreet Studio where his neighbors were Pollock and Krasner. This wasa period of great experimentation influenced by Surrealist automatism,Picasso and Hofmann.In 1946, Little was given his first solo exhibition at the California Palaceof the Legion of Honor in San Francisco with a follow up one-man showin 1948 at Betty Parsons’s New York gallery. In the 1950s, his paintingbecame extremely gestural with aggressively applied, thick paint. He alsobegan a series of experimental mixed-media assemblage works createdfrom debris found on the beaches of Montauk. Hans Namuth documentedthese works in his 1955 film, “Image of the Sea.” In that same year Littlehad a two-man exhibition at Guild Hall with Pollock, and in 1957 he foundedthe Signa Gallery along with Alfonso Ossorio and Elizabeth Parker. Signa,which lasted for four years, mounted innovative exhibitions and became ahighly important summertime venue showcasing the best of the New Yorkart scene. In the 1960s Little’s abstract style evolved with a flattening ofthe paint layer and massed areas of color overlapping and interlocking inan endless variety of compositions.