Nicholas Krushenick (1929-1999) was an American abstract painter whose unique practice embraced Pop Art, Op Art and Minimalist movements of the 1950s to 1970s.
Native to New York, Krushenick’s career flourished in the city in the late 1950s. He would become known for his stylistic synthesis of predominant art movements, incorporating the spontaneity of the Abstract Expressionists with the flat planes and animated styles of Pop Art.
Along with his brother John, Nicholas founded the artist cooperative, ‘Brata Gallery’ in 1957, one of the famous 10th Street galleries in New York. These modest, artist-run spaces rejected the established uptown gallerists that governed the industry. Young artists showing at Brata, including Yayoi Kusama, Al Held, and Ed Clark, favoured bold and optimistic art and often used pop culture graphics.
Krushenick’s signature style developed in the 1960s. Inspired by an exhibition of Henri Matisse’s late cut-paper works, Krushenick favoured bright colour blocks and employed black outlines. By the late 1960s, his style evolved, and his painting’s edges would often be framed in black.
Such compositional confinement is exhibited in Return of the Phantom, where Krushenick encloses a red colour field with his characteristic black lines and dynamic blue and yellow rectangles. Described in Artforum as the missing link between Hard Edge Abstraction and Pop Art, Krushenick’s swaths of bright colour, illustrative lines, and abstract forms, still place him as an important figure in the Pop Art movement.
In 1964, Krushenick was included in the cornerstone exhibition, Post-Painterly Abstraction, organized by Clement Greenberg at the Los Angeles Country Art Museum. Since then, Krushenick’s works have held a solid position in the American modern art canon as a connector of contrasting modernist styles. His work continues to influence contemporary artists such as Carroll Dunham and Julia Dault.
Krushenick’s works can be found in the permanent collections of institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, CAN), Albright-Knox Gallery (Buffalo, NY), Smithsonian American Art Museum (D.C.) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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“Return of the Phantom”
Silkscreen
Signed and numbered by the artist.
From an edition of 200
28.5”H 24”W (artwork)
32.5 "H 27.5"W (framed)
Note: this work is sold unframed.
Custom framing options available by request.
