Nassos Daphnis
American, born Greece, 1914 - 2010B-11-66, 1966
Not on view
Epoxy on canvas
Dimensions67 1/8 × 92 in. (170.5 × 233.7 cm)
Framed: 68 3/4 × 93 5/8 in. (174.6 × 237.8 cm)
Gift of Estelle Durant, 1978.24
Nassos Daphnis was a leading exponent of geometric abstraction. Born near Sparta, in Greece, he immigrated as a teen to the United States. After serving in the army in 1942 painting camouflage on vehicles in Italy and witnessing the devastation of the landscape there, he began painting surreal landscapes. In the 1950s, when Abstract Expressionism placed a premium on psychological intensity and spontaneous mark-making, he coolly arranged color in precise, controlled patterns on the canvas. In his color-plane theory, black commanded a forward position, with blue, red and yellow progressively receding toward white, which represented infinity. He developed a color theory, which he used in his hard-edge painting, and considered black the most forward color, with the other colors receding back to white, which, for him, represented infinity.
