Description

This is an abstract work on paper completed in 2005, making it one of the last pieces Irving Haynes completed before he passed away.  Haynes' use of line and shape is clearly a nod to his training as an architect.  But his innovative use of color -- purples and tans -- is also apparent here.

Details

• Irving B. Haynes (American, 1927-2005)
• Untitled Abstract (2005) 
• Acrylic on paper 
  
• Initialed and dated in lower right hand corner
  
• 32 3/4" x 25" (overall) 31" x 23 1/4" (sight)
• New framed under plexiglass

About the Artist

Irving Haynes is one of our favorite under-recognized artists of the 20th century.  A former professor at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Haynes was a true renaissance man:  war veteran, architect, talented athlete, photographer and jazz pianist. Born in Maine in 1927, he graduated from RISD in 1951 with a degree in painting and established his own architectural firm in 1968. He then went on to have a distinguished career as a painter and architect for nearly half a century.  Painting, however, was Haynes’ true passion.  A confirmed “modernist", he utilized a variety of media on paper -- crayon, wax, watercolor, and acrylic -- to manipulate light, texture, shape and line.  He was especially renowned for his skillful use of color. His friend and colleague at RISD, Thomas Lyon Mills, told the Brown Daily Herald, “Irving admired other painters whose idealistic search for precision often was a difficult one...He loved Cezanne. … Cezanne’s color and rock-solid compositions that were at once flat and spatial.”

In 2005, just a few months after his death, RISD’s Industrial Design Department Gallery hosted an exhibition of his most recent works called “Irving B. Haynes: Paintings, 2001-2005”. In 2009 the Newport Art Museum held another retrospective titled "Irving B. Haynes, Abstractions: 1960-2005."  Examples of his work are in the permanent collections of the Newport Art Museum and the RISD Art Museum.