Nude by the Sea (1961) testifies to Milton Avery’s unique approach to synthesizing representation and abstraction. Avery reduced the form of the figure to its basic geometry, using line to give shape to anatomy and a shock of orange to represent hair. With a blank face, the sitter is transformed into an anonymous archetype with universal appeal, a visual device employed by other modernist masters including Henri Matisse, whose skill as a colorist finds echoes throughout Avery’s body of work. Avery distilled the background even further into three bands of abstract blue color fields—sky, sea, and perhaps a towel for the sitter. Color, rather than linear perspective, commands the pictorial space in Nude by the Sea to create visual depth.