About the artist:

Lester Johnson began his painting career as an abstract expressionist, but in the mid-1950s abandoned that style for a distinctive figurative approach in which he pays homage to the modern everyman. Using a somber, limited palette-often only brown, black and dull blue-and applying his paint thickly, he produces strong, powerful canvases which convey a sense of the isolation of the individual. Johnson was born in Minneapolis in 1919. He began his studies at the Minneapolis School of Art, then went to the St. Paul School of Art, and finally to the Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to New York City in 1947 and had the first exhibition of his abstract paintings there four years later. For years, Johnson had a studio in the Bowery so that he could study the despair and hopelessness of the men who lived there, rejected by society. His aim, as his style evolved, was to give them dignity. "I wanted to prove that man is more than a man-to put him on a pedestal," he explained. "The human and the monumental are contradictory, but I wanted to put them together." He succeeded developing a monumental sense of the human figure, unlike anything done before. His figures, many of them in hats, wearing nondescript black or brown suits, usually are massed against monochromatic or white backgrounds. They seem to crowd in on one another. Heads, hands and sometimes feet loom. The faces of Johnson's figures are generalized. He makes little effort to contrast one with another. Above all, he makes no comment of his own on their condition. Drawing plays an important part in Johnson's art. It brings out the image and determines scale. But it is the way he handles paint that gives his work its raw strength. He piles it on, overpaints, scrapes and scores it with his brush handle. There are even occasional vestiges of his abstract phase, in drips of paint he uses to create effects. Johnson's work is repetitive, however. He uses the same images over and over, changing only the light and the mood. Over the years Johnson has taught at various schools and universities. Since 1964, he has been director of studies in graduate painting at Yale University. Education: Minneapolis School of Art, The President’s Scholarship, 1940-41 St. Paul Art School The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Member: American Academy of Arts and Letters Exhibitions: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1949, 1951, 1957, 1964 The Jewish Museum, New York, 1956 Stable Gallery, New York, 1957 Minneapolis Institute of Art, 1957 Whitney Museum of American Art, 1958, 1967, 1968, 1973 The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1958, 1970 Salzburg Festival, Germany, 1959 Nebraska Art Association, 1959 University of Colorado, 1959 Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 1959, 1960 American Federation of Arts, 1960, 1965 The Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, 1961 The Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1961, 1964, 1967,1970 The Art Institute of Chicago, 1962, 1972, 1979 The Museum of Modern Art, 1962, 1967, 1968, 1986 Musee Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1963 The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Connecticut, 1964, 1967, 1977, 1987 (Solo) Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Chent, Belgium, 1964 New School Art Center, New York, 1964 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1964, 1972, 1979 Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, 1968 Center of Visual Arts Institute Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, 1968 Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, 1969 Philadelphia Art Alliance, 1969 Fondation Marguerite et Aime Maeght L’Art Vivant aux etats Unis, St. Paul-de-Vence, France, 1969, 1970 Il Bienal Internacional del Deporte en las Bellas Artes, Madrid, 1969 Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, 1972, 1974 Palazzo dell’Academia, Palazzo Reale, Genoa, Italy, 1972 Exhibitions Continued: La Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France, 1973 New Britain Museum of American Art, 1978 Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 1980, 1981, 2001 Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1983 Art Museum Association of America, San Francisco, 1984 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1985 Westmoreland Museum of Art, Greensburg, PA, 1987 (Solo) Augustana College, Rock Island, IL, 1988 (Solo) Norwalk Community Technical College, Norwalk, CT, 1996 (Solo) Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA: “Figurative Expressionism:” Paintings 1963-2000”, 2001 (Solo) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2003 Collections: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD Boca Raton Museum, Boca Raton, FL The Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA Dayton Art institute, Dayton, OH The Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Museums, Cambridge, MA Fort Lauderdale Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY Guild Hall, East Hampton, NY Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, HI Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI Madison Art Center, Madison, WI The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA National Museum of American Art, Washington DC Neuberger Museum SUNY, Purchase, NY The New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ The New School for Social Research, New York, NY The New York Public Library, New York, NY Orton Museum, Ohio State University, Dayton, OH Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska Art Galleries, Lincoln, NE