Oli Sihvonen

Oli Sihvonen, an abstract hard-edge painter, spent his career studying the interaction of geometric shapes, surfaces and the adjacency of colors and how those combinations influence visual perception. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and after World War II studied at Black Mountain College where Josef Albers was a major influence and source of inspiration. After Black Mountain he lived in New Mexico and then painted murals in Mexico for a year. Sihvonen moved back east to Washington, D.C. and New York, teaching at Hunter College and Cooper Union. He returned to New Mexico in the late 1950s, inspired by the light, serenity and heroic landscapes, he painted his large canvases and diptychs in Taos. During the New Mexico years, his career took off on the east coast with his paintings included in seminal exhibitions such as Geometric Abstraction In America, 1962, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Formalists, 1963, The Washington Museum of Contemporary Art, Washington, D.C.; and the legendary Responsive Eye in 1965 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, with the latter also purchasing one of Sihvonen’s Elipse paintings for their permanent collection. His artwork was featured in exhibitions at Betty Parson’s and a solo show at the Stable Gallery. Sihvonen returned to New York in 1967 where he continued to explore geometry and optical effects in painting and their impact on visual perception.

Oli Sihvonen was a recipient of grants from the Pollack Krasner Foundation in 1988, Adolph and Ester Gottlieb Foundation in 1985 and two from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1977 and 1967. His artwork is included in the permanent collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, Rockefeller University, New York, NY, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, TX, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA, Ashville Art Museum, Ashville, NC, Albuquerque Museum of Art, Albuquerque, NM, Black Mountain College Museum, Ashville, NC, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM, Brandeis University, Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA, Harwood Foundation Museum of Art, Taos, NM, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM, New York State Art Collection, Albany, NY, Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM and Worchester Art Museum, Worchester, MA among others.

Above statement from www.davidrichardgallery.com