Jay Milder

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, he became a noted abstract painter in the New York art scene from 1958 when he, Bob Thompson, and Red Grooms founded City Gallery. They were all influenced by Abstract Expressionism, but closer to Willem De Kooning than Jackson Pollock because all three were committed to figurative work.

As a child he was influenced by both the Hasidic mysticism of his ancestors and by the black dominated jazz night clubs he frequented in North Omaha. In the early 1950s he studied in Paris with Ossip Zadkine and Andre Lhote but was most influenced by the abstract work of Chaim Soutine, who had died a decade earlier.

In the 1960s, Milder found himself increasingly an outsider because he had little interest in prevalent styles, Minimalism and Pop Art. He and others formed a group the called Rhino Horn, a loose association of figurative artists who painted in Expressionist style. In the 1970s, with the return of figurative painting in public acceptance, he felt more in the mainstream.

askart.com