Ray Parker will launch the 2007 season with an exhibition opening on January 11 at the Washburn Gallery. Large paintings (108 x 95 in.) from the 1960s will be shown for the first time with small drawings (8 x 9 in.) recently discovered in Parker’s studio. A major exhibition of Ray Parker’s work, “Color into Drawing,” was held this summer in the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University. Five paintings from the Milwaukee show will be included at the Washburn Gallery and are illustrated in the attached brochure.
William C. Agee wrote in the catalogue for the Haggerty Museum that Parker’s paintings of the latter 1960s formed “a literal, allover field of color. Into these fields he introduced myriad forms of all manners and shapes, in a wide variety of contrasting colors. The results were dazzling…”
Ray Parker is represented in the collections of over 50 museums and solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1950), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1961), the San Francisco Museum of Art (1967), and the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio (1986) among many other museums. This exhibition will be the fifth organized by the Washburn Gallery.
Ray Parker was born on August 22, 1922 in Beresford, South Dakota and he died on April 14, 1990 in New York.