New York City Circa 1960: Works from the Collection of Robert A. Ellison, Jr.
New York City Circa 1960: Works from the Collection of Robert A. Ellison, Jr. brings together paintings and works on paper created by a network of 15 artists in the years surrounding 1960, a pivotal moment of expansion in post-war American art. Centered on the collection of Robert A. Ellison, Jr., the exhibition situates both his own work and his collection of art by his contemporaries and friends within the vibrant downtown Manhattan art scene—particularly the creative set of artists, gallerists and collectors clustered around Tenth Street.  
 
After World War II, New York emerged as the center of the international art world. Although Abstract Expressionism had become the dominant mode, by the 1960s many artists experienced a productive tension between abstraction and figuration, material experimentation and narrative possibility. The works presented in the exhibition reflect a community defined by restless energy and an exchange of ideas that embraced these parallel approaches to painting at a moment of artistic expansion. Together, they capture the spirit of camaraderie and experimentation that laid the groundwork for new directions in American art. 
  • Robert A. Ellison, Jr. (1932-2021)

    Robert A. Ellison, Jr. (1932-2021)

    Robert A. Ellison Jr. (1932–2021) was a painter, photographer, cabinetmaker, gallerist, and impassioned collector who, for more than six decades, dedicated himself to American art and the artists who made it. Raised in Fort Worth, Texas, he was the son of Margaret McCracken and Robert Anderson Ellison, whose family business, the Ellison Furniture and Carpet Company, was founded by his grandfather in 1888. In the late 1950s, Ellison and his first wife, Nancy Ellison, spent a formative year in New York City, where they forged close ties with leading Abstract Expressionists, including Milton Resnick, Pat Passlof, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Emily Mason and Wolf Kahn, among others.
     
    Returning to Fort Worth in 1959, the Ellisons opened an art gallery on the ground floor of the family business, introducing artists of the avant-garde New York School to a Texas audience. Following the sale of the family company in 1962, they relocated permanently to New York, living, working, and socializing on the Lower East Side and later in Greenwich Village. Immersed in the Abstract Expressionist milieu, Ellison turned with great enthusiasm to painting, describing his practice as “lots of abstraction—no imagery and lots of thick paint.” Alongside his own work, he assembled a visionary collection of American modern art, postwar abstraction, and a landmark collection of ceramics. From that collection, Ellison donated more than 600 ceramic objects to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in a transformative gift. After meeting artist Rosaire Appel in 1983, the two married in 1994 and went on to share a life devoted to art until his passing in 2021.
     
  • Pat Passlof (1928-2011)

    Pat Passlof (1928-2011)

    Raised in New York, Pat Passlof began her artistic training at Black Mountain College in 1948, where she studied with Willem de Kooning—an experience that proved foundational. She later continued working with him privately before completing her BFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1951.

    By the mid-1950s, Passlof was fully engaged in the dynamic downtown New York art scene, participating in the conversations that shaped postwar abstraction. She was closely involved with The Club and the co-op gallery network on Tenth Street, and, together with her husband, painter Milton Resnick, occupied an important place within this community of artists, writers, and critics. Her work reflects both the concerns of Abstract Expressionism, as well a fiercely independent sensibility. Early paintings draw on biomorphic forms and gestural language, while later works open into lighter palettes and more rhythmic, layered surfaces, often suggesting landscape, memory, or myth without becoming overtly narrative. In a career spanning decades, she remained committed to reinvention over repetition. In addition to her studio practice, Passlof was a devoted teacher at CUNY for nearly forty years. Although historically less visible than some of her contemporaries, her work has received increasing institutional recognition in recent years, underscoring her lasting contribution to postwar American painting.
  • Milton Resnick (1917-2004)

    Milton Resnick (1917-2004)

    Milton Resnick was a foundational figure of the New York School whose uncompromising commitment to abstraction reshaped the possibilities of postwar American painting. Born in Bratslav, Ukraine, he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1922 and grew up in Brooklyn, where he participated in the city’s vibrant arts culture at a young age. After studying commercial art at the Pratt Institute, Resnick transferred to the American Artists School, graduating in 1937 and forming close friendships with Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning, relationships that anchored him within the earliest circle of Abstract Expressionism.

    Over the course of his long career, Resnick developed a deeply personal language of abstraction, moving from gestural compositions to monumental canvases built through dense accumulations of paint. His works emphasize continuous, all-over surfaces and the physical presence of paint, dissolving image and form in favor of a sustained engagement with materials and perception. This devotion to the actuality of paint positioned Resnick both within and beyond Abstract Expressionism, anticipating the proto-minimalist and process-driven investigations of later artists such as Robert Ryman, Frank Stella, and Donald Judd. As critic Roberta Smith wrote in her New York Times obituary of the artist, “In terms of longevity and dedication to first principles, Mr. Resnick might qualify as the last Abstract Expressionist painter. In terms of timing he had some claim to being among the first.”

    Resnick’s life and work were closely intertwined with that of his wife, the painter Pat Passlof, with whom he shared a lifelong artistic dialogue and intellectual partnership. Widely exhibited during his lifetime and since, Resnick’s paintings are held in major museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery of Art, securing his place as one of the most rigorous and philosophically driven painters of postwar American abstraction.

  • Bob Thompson (1937-1966)

    Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1937, Bob Thompson studied at Boston University and the University of Louisville before leaving school in 1958 to immerse himself in New York City's downtown art and jazz scenes. In his brief but brilliant career as a figurative painter during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, Thompson developed a distinctive style of dreamlike compositions rendered in vibrant colors. Drawing from centuries of art history, he boldly reinterpreted works by Old Masters like Nicolas Poussin and Francisco Goya, challenging racial and artistic conventions while forging a unique visual language. In 1960, Thompson received his first solo show at Delancey Street Museum and soon earned fellowships and grants that enabled him and his wife to live and work in Europe. Despite his tragically short life—he died at age 28 in Rome due to complications from surgery—Thompson left a large body of work, many of which are now held by prestigious institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His work has been widely exhibited since his death, notably in a landmark retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1998.­­­­

  • Elaine de Kooning (1918-1989)

    Over the course of her career, Elaine de Kooning cultivated a multifaceted practice that combined painting with criticism and teaching. Born Elaine Fried in New York City in 1918, she was introduced to art at an early age through museum visits and drawing opportunities encouraged by her mother. She studied in New York, including at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, where she met Willem de Kooning, whom she later married, and continued her training under his guidance. By the 1940s, de Kooning was actively involved in the Abstract Expressionist movement, not only as a painter but also as a writer and critic. Through her work with ARTnews, she played a key role in shaping public understanding of the movement, writing on artists such as Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, and Jackson Pollock, and was a founding member of The Club, a central forum for artists and critics in downtown New York.

    While closely associated with abstraction, de Kooning remained rooted in figuration throughout her career. Her work often brought the gestural intensity of Abstract Expressionism to subjects such as bullfights, athletes, and portraiture--a central and recurring focus of her work. She is perhaps best known for her portrait of John F. Kennedy, for which she produced numerous sketches and paintings in an effort to capture his presence and energy. Over time, her work continued to evolve, incorporating new themes, visual styles, and approaches, including later series inspired by prehistoric cave imagery. De Kooning also taught at institutions, such as Yale University and the Parsons School of Design, and her work is held in major museum collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art.
    • Elaine De Kooning
    • Elaine De Kooning (1918-1989) Portrait of Conrad, 1955
      Elaine De Kooning (1918-1989)
      Portrait of Conrad, 1955
       
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  • Jan Müller (1922-1958)

    Jan Müller’s career unfolded with a sense of urgency that shaped both the direction and intensity of his work. Born in Hamburg in 1922, the artist emigrated to the United States with his family in 1941 in order to flee Nazi Germany. From 1945 to 1950, Müller studied with Hans Hofmann, initially producing abstract compositions in structured fields of color that reflected Hofmann’s influence. By the mid-1950s, however, he began introducing figures into these compositions--first tentatively, and then with increasing confidence--developing scenes populated by skeletal, levitating, and often fantastical forms.

    Today, Müller’s paintings are marked by a distinctive tension between structure and imagination, combining mosaic-like surfaces with figures that appear to float across the canvas. Drawing on sources ranging from medieval imagery to literary themes, his work constructs dense, almost architectural compositions that support groups of animated, often otherworldly figures. Writing about Müller in 1958, poet and critic John Ashbery observed that he "brings a medieval sensibility to neo-Expressionist paintings," a characterization that underscores the imaginative range embedded in his body of work.

    In 1954, following major heart surgery, the artist’s practice took on an added sense of urgency, coinciding with his shift away from abstraction toward a more fully developed figurative language. A founding member of the Hansa Gallery, he exhibited regularly during his lifetime, with his work later included in major institutional exhibitions, such as those at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Müller's Arcadian world of mythic, theatrical figures would also prove influential for the next generation of artists, including Bob Thompson, who drew on its imaginative staging and classical references. Though Müller's career was cut short by his death in 1958, he produced a body of work defined by its intensity, invention, and rapid evolution.

  • Dody Müller (d. 2001)

    Dody Müller's imaginative body of work is defined by her use of shifting imagery, layered space, and a dreamlike sense of the unknown. Her paintings resist singular interpretation, instead returning to a set of recurring motifs, such as horses, birds, and winged creatures, that reappear across compositions in changing forms. These figures often drift loosely across defined grounds, where space is segmented into overlapping and interacting planes, creating unexpected combinations. Müller’s approach to composition reflects a collage-like quality, bringing together varying elements that feel spontaneous and open-ended.

    Working primarily in New York and Paris during the 1950s and 60s, Müller was a founding member of the Hansa Gallery and an active presence in the postwar art community. Her paintings are distinguished by a rich, luminous color palette, and a visual language that moves between fantasy and observation, often combining playful or symbolic imagery with a subtly unsettling tone. Throughout her career, she remained committed to an intuitive mode of painting, producing works that reflect an inner, imaginative world rather than direct representation. She exhibited regularly in New York and abroad, including in Paris, maintaining an active presence in the art world during the 1950s and 60s.
  • Jay Milder (b. 1934)

    Jay Milder (b. 1934)

    During a period shaped by the dominance of abstract painting, Jay Milder's distinctive figurative approach was informed by both spiritual inquiry and a continual focus on gesture and form. Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1934, he went on to study in Paris in the early 1950s under Ossip Zadkine and André Lhote. During this period, the artist encountered the work of Chaim Soutine, which became a major influence on his artistic development. Returning to New York, he emerged in the late 1950s as part of a generation of artists committed to figuration, co-founding City Gallery, alongside Bob Thompson and Red Grooms.

    While influenced by Abstract Expressionism, Milder maintained a focus on the figure, aligning more closely with Willem de Kooning’s gestural style than with pure abstraction. Indeed, his work draws on a wide range of sources, including Hasidic mysticism, jazz culture, and philosophical traditions, which inform both his subject matter and approach to image-making. Throughout his career, Milder described his practice as rooted in a "dialect perspective," emphasizing the capacity of painting to hold multiple meanings simultaneously. His compositions are marked by their energetic handling and heavily worked surfaces, often built up with thick applications of oil paint to create a sense of movement and immediacy. In series such as his Subway Runners, figures are rendered with exaggerated scale and animated by a dynamic sense of motion within loosely defined urban environments. Across his work, biblical and symbolic imagery appears alongside scenes drawn from contemporary life, reflecting an ongoing use of both the spiritual and the everyday.

    Jay Milder taught and lectured at a number of institutions, including Yale University and the City University of New York. His work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally, and has received recognition including awards from the Mexican government and the Rainbow Arts Foundation.
    • Jay Milder (b. 1934) Subway Figures #1, 1963
      Jay Milder (b. 1934)
      Subway Figures #1, 1963
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    • Jay Milder (b. 1934) Subway Figures #2, 1963
      Jay Milder (b. 1934)
      Subway Figures #2, 1963
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  • Emily Mason (1932-2019)

    Emily Mason (1932-2019)

    Born in New York City in 1932, Emily Mason developed a personal and intuitive approach to abstraction over the course of a long and sustained career. Often distinguished by her sensitivity to color, light, and process, Mason was first introduced to painting at an early age by her mother, painter Alice Trumbull Mason, and went on to study at Bennington College and Cooper Union. In 1956, she received a Fulbright grant to study in Venice, where she attended the Accademia di Belle Arti and began experimenting with new techniques, while absorbing the qualities of Italian light and Renaissance fresco painting. In 1957, while still in Italy, she married fellow painter Wolf Kahn. Returning to New York in the late 1950s, Mason came of age within a postwar art world shaped by Abstract Expressionism, yet she maintained a distinctly independent direction. While her work shares affinities with both Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting, she resisted positioning herself within any single movement, developing a layered, process-driven approach rooted in intuition. Her technique--consisting of pouring, staining, and brushing thinned oil paint onto unprimed canvas--resulted in works in which color appears to shift, merge, and dissolve. Throughout her career, Emily Mason remained deeply invested in the expressive and perceptual possibilities of color, often describing her work as similar to natural processes rather than direct representations.

    In addition to her studio work, Emily Mason was a dedicated educator, teaching painting at Hunter College for more than three decades. Her work has been widely exhibited and is held in numerous public and private collections, with presentations at institutions such as the National Academy Museum and the Neuberger Museum of Art. Over a career spanning more than sixty years, she remained committed to a mode of painting that shaped perception and the evolution of the image.
    • Emily Mason (1932-2019) Stonington, 1961
      Emily Mason (1932-2019)
      Stonington, 1961
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    • Emily Mason (1932-2019) Green Camp, 1967 On Loan
      Emily Mason (1932-2019)
      Green Camp, 1967
      On Loan
  • Wolf Kahn (1927-2020)

    Wolf Kahn (1927-2020)

    Over the course of his long career, Wolf Kahn approached landscape painting through his experiences of displacement, close observation, and continued exploration of color and light. Born in Germany in 1927, Kahn was sent to England as a child refugee during the rise of Nazism before reuniting with his family in New York in 1940, where he later attended the High School of Music and Art. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he studied under Stuart Davis at the New School for Social Research, as well as with Hans Hofmann, eventually working as Hofmann’s studio assistant before completing a B.A. at the University of Chicago in 1951. Returning to New York in the early 1950s, Kahn became part of a generation of artists navigating the space between abstraction and representation and he helped found the cooperative Hansa Gallery with fellow Hofmann students. In 1957, he married fellow painter Emily Mason. Kahn's early work, notable for vibrant color and energetic brushwork, reflected this moment while still drawing directly from the observed world. Over time, his paintings shifted toward a more restrained palette and simplified compositions, developing a quieter and more introspective visual language.

    Kahn’s work focuses on the relationship between light, color, and form, using landscape as a means to explore perception rather than direct representation. His compositions often balance abstraction and figuration, with soft horizons and atmospheric effects that blur the boundaries between sky and land. Across decades, he remained deeply engaged with the expressive potential of color, continuing to experiment even in his later years. In addition to his studio practice, Kahn taught at institutions including the University of California, Berkeley, Cooper Union, and Dartmouth College, and received honors such as Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships. Today, Kahn’s work is held in major museum collections, including the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.
    • Wolf Kahn (1927-2020) Untitled
      Wolf Kahn (1927-2020)
      Untitled
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    • Wolf Kahn (1927-2020) Untitled, 1961
      Wolf Kahn (1927-2020)
      Untitled, 1961
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  • Robert De Niro, Sr. (1922-1993)

    Robert De Niro, Sr. (1922-1993)

    Robert De Niro, Sr. developed a personal painterly language that merged the expressive freedom of Abstract Expressionism and a sustained engagement with European modernism. Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1922, De Niro demonstrated artistic promise from an early age, studying first at the Syracuse Museum of art, and then as a teenager with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown and, later, with Josef Albers at Black Mountain College. Hofmann’s emphasis on color, spatial tension, and improvisational brushwork proved especially formative, informing De Niro’s vibrant, gestural style that would define his output. By the mid-1940s, de Niro had established himself within the New York art world, exhibiting at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery and later at Charles Egan Gallery, where he was exhibited alongside key figures of the New York School. Although closely associated with the second-generation of Abstract Expressionists, he maintained an independent artistic vision, remaining committed to figuration and to the legacy of European masters, such as Henri Matisse and Émile Bonnard. His paintings, animated by saturated color, fluid line, and expressive form, maintain a dialogue between abstraction and representation that foregrounds the act of painting itself.

    De Niro’s work is held in major public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, among others. International recognition of his achievements was reinforced by the 2009 retrospective at the Musée Matisse in Nice, France, highlighting the global interest in his work and its connection to the European modernist tradition.
  • Lester Frederick Johnson (1919-2010)

    Lester Frederick Johnson (1919-2010)

    The human figure, shaped by the rhythms and pressures of urban life, is central to Lester Frederick Johnson's painting practice. Working within postwar American painting, he developed a distinctive, figurative approach that positioned him both alongside and apart from Abstract Expressionism. Born in 1919, Johnson moved to New York in 1947, where he became deeply embedded in the downtown art scene. He participated in The Club and the Tenth Street cooperative gallery movement, both of which played an important role in shaping the artistic discourse of the period. Though initially working in abstraction, Johnson turned toward the figure in the mid-1950s, bringing an expressionist sensibility to subjects drawn from everyday urban life.

    His paintings depict individuals and crowds defined by the intensity and pace of the city, conveyed through vigorous brushwork and spatially compressed compositions. His figures appear alternatively isolated or densely grouped, suggesting both the anonymity and emotional weight of modern urban experience in New York. For Johnson, the figure was bound up with what he described as its “form, rhythm, and logic,” a sense of internal structure he associated particularly with the head, which he often used symbolically. More broadly, he insisted that painting had to remain “alive,” a quality he linked to “the feeling of pulsating movement and change” observed in both nature and the human body. Over time, his work shifted in tone, moving from darker, more confrontational imagery toward compositions filled with movement, color, and a heightened sense of energy.

    While closely associated with the New York School, Johnson maintained an independent position, focusing on figuration at a moment when abstraction dominated critical discourse. Johnson was also a dedicated educator and taught for many years at institutions including Yale University, amongst others. Over a career spanning several decades, he produced a body of work that grappled with the emotional weight of everyday life, balancing formal experimentation and engagement with lived experience.
  • Robert Goodnough (1917-2010)

    Robert Goodnough (1917-2010)

    During the emergence of postwar American abstraction, Robert Goodnough cultivated an evolving painting practice maintaining a degree of independence from the dominant styles and expectations of the movement. Born in Cortland, New York, in 1917, he studied at the Amédée Ozenfant School of Fine Arts, the Hans Hofmann School, and the New School for Social Research, later earning an M.A. in Art Education from New York University in 1950. His early exposure to abstraction came through his studies with Hofmann, following an initial engagement with a more representational style.

    Working in New York during the rise of Abstract Expressionism, Goodnough was closely connected to many of its central figures, including Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, whom he encountered through The Club. While he moved within this circle, his work resisted easy categorization, combining loose, expressive brushwork with more controlled compositional structures. His paintings are often distinguished by energetic, calligraphic strokes of color set against more structured underlying forms. Over time, his work shifted in both structure and emphasis, moving from early, open compositions to more architectonic arrangements, and later returning to a greater emphasis on line and movement. Influences ranging from Piet Mondrian and Henri Matisse to Color Field painting informed different phases of his practice, which consistently navigated between structure and spontaneity. Throughout these developments, Goodnough described his process as a balance between freedom and discipline, embracing both expressive gesture and careful control.

    Goodnough held teaching positions taught at several institutions, including Syracuse University and Cornell University. His work has been widely exhibited, with solo presentations at institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Over the course of his career, he produced a body of work that reflects both the energy of Abstract Expressionism and a sustained interest in structure, process, and change.
  • Ben Johnson (1902-1967)

    Ben Johnson (1902-1967)

    Ben Johnson forged an independent painting practice centered almost exclusively on the nude, rendered at a larger-than-life scale and in a broad, flat style, marked by vivid use of color. Celebratory and distinctly modern, his work stood apart from that of his contemporaries in the New York School, maintaining a focus on the figure at a moment when abstraction dominated.

    Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1902, Johnson studied at the Pratt Institute, though illness interrupted his training. During his convalescence, he turned seriously to painting, earning early recognition with a prize at the International Watercolor Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 1925, followed by two Tiffany Foundation grants in the early 1930s. After an initial solo exhibition in New York in 1930, he stepped away from painting for over a decade before resuming his practice in Woodstock, New York.

    At times controversial, Johnson's work anticipates aspects of Pop Art through his bold treatment of the nude, combining expansive compositions with a strong sense of color and form. Over time, his work gained wider recognition and was exhibited in New York and beyond, including a 1959 solo exhibition at the Ellison Gallery in Forth Worth, Texas. Across his career, he produced a body of work notable for its independence, formal clarity, and sustained engagement with the human figure.
  • For additional information on the works presented in New York City Circa 1960: Works from the Collection of Robert, A. Ellison, Jr. please be in touch with us at info@schoelkopfgallery.com or (212) 879-8815.