John Button | Gouaches, Watercolors, and Drawings

Born in California, John Button (1929-1982) was educated at UCLA, Berkeley, before moving to New York City in the early 1950s. Amdist the frenzy of Abstract Expressionism, Button remained true to his interest in realism, and is now most commonly associated with such New York School artists as Fairfield Porter, Jane Freilicher, and Alex Katz. Concerning Button, Bill Berkson has written: “The scaled-up perceptual intimacy his best paintings assert is part of what the realist wing of the New York School developed, beginning in the ’50s, as a counterthrust to—as well as an absorption of—abstraction’s headlong specifying of applied paint.”