Alfred Russell in his Croton-on-Hudson studio, 1965: photographer unknown

Alfred Russell

Alfred Russell (1920-2007), master of both abstract expressionism and figurative art, was “a painter with a gift for the magic of spidery lines,” according to critic Jed Perl. Russell began his career in the mid-1940s, studying at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 and at Columbia University (MA, 1946). His early abstract work was featured in eight Whitney exhibitions from 1949-55, in MoMA’s major abstract show in 1951 and, with Pollock and de Kooning, in the controversial 1951 Paris exhibition Véhémences Confrontées that contrasted American with European painters. In 1953, Russell renounced avant-garde abstraction as “The Bourgeoisation of Modern Art,” lamenting in a provocative essay the rise of “assembly-line product for the needs of mass culture.” In the words of painter David Carbone, “he walked out of the history of post-war abstraction and into oblivion.” For the next five decades, he worked in a diverse range of mostly figurative styles, including classical and geometric forms, exhibiting rarely. He continued to teach at Brooklyn College until 1974, and painted and drew until his death.


In recent years, revived interest in Russell has seen him represented in major shows including Serge Guilbaut's Be-Bomb: the Transatlantic War of Images and all that Jazz (Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2007), United States of Abstraction, Artistes americains en France, 1946-1964 (Musée d’arts de Nantes and the Musée Fabre de Montpellier, 2021), and Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946–1962 (Grey Art Museum, 2024).

Museum Collections:

La Rue de Nevers
1949
oil on canvas
The Graveyard
1950
engraving and aquatint
The Frontier
1949
color engraving and aquatint
Weeds, Stones and Thistles
1946
engraving and aquatint
Two Figures
1946
color engraving