John Grillo

A leading exponent of Bay Area Abstract Expressionism during the 1940s, John Grillo was a painter, sculptor, and printmaker regarded as one the purest and most influential “action painters” on the West Coast. Though his diverse and colorful body of work ranged from abstraction to figuration, his art is considered linked in its uniquely aggressive and spontaneous approach. Grillo creates bold, fluid, gestural works such as Untitled #69 (1947) and Untitled (1949) that draw on the influence of Surrealist automatism. After moving to New York in 1948, Grillo began a series of paintings consisting of small, precisely organized colored squares, as seen in Untitled (1951) and Untitled (1959); these and other works were influenced by the color theories of Hans Hofmann, with whom he studied. Grillo’s later work was more figurative, but no less colorful, with works such as Blue Hat (1978) or Duerme (1980) recalling the Expressionism of Max Beckmann.