AMERICAN

John Grillo - "Untitled_9949"

Painting, Watercolor, 30" x 22".

Although he was only there for two short years (1946-1948), Grillo played a seminal role in the San Francisco branch of a movement that would revolutionize American Art. Today, Grillo is acknowledged as perhaps the first and purest “action painter” on the West Coast and “one of the most influential painters of San Francisco’s school of Abstract Expressionism” (Thomas Albright, “Art in the San Francisco Bay Area” 1985.)

In 1948, Grillo left San Francisco for the East Coast. Arriving in New York City, he entered the school  of Hans Hofmann, an artist who had a love of dazzling colors that matched his own. He also spent summers at Hofmann’s School in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A mutual respect ensued, resulting in Hofmann’s acquiring paintings of Grillo’s. He then had his first one-man show in New York City at the Artist’s Gallery in 1948. In the 1950’s he experimented with symbolism and action painting and grid-like paintings consisting of small squares based on Hofmann’s teachings. In the 1960’s, Grillo’s paintings evolved into a series of oversize canvases primarily in a luminous yellow range that to the critics evoked the power of light and sunshine.In the 1970’s Grillo continued Geometric paintings, this time on a larger scale in a constructivist manner. He also produced a series of voluptuous drawings, prints and paintings of female nudes ranging from innocence to those provocative in nature. Toward the late seventies Grillo created a body of work he named the “Kaleidoscope Series”. Some of these paintings remain abstract while others could easily be recognized as landscape paintings with trees, mountains and hills.

In a recent interview Grillo’s thoughts included the following: “Abstract painting is on a level with music. It’s a physical outburst from your whole being. It’s not the idea that is created and then you start painting. It’s always a challenge to shape something from nothing, to do the impossible.” Credit Jamieson Grillo, August, 2001.

Subject: Abstract       Back to Previous Page