Oli Sihvonen (1921-1991)

Oli Sihvonen, born in Brooklyn, attended Black Mountain College from 1946 to 1948. Sihvonen’s geometric-optical abstractions reflect what he had learned from his mentor Joseph Albers. “Abstraction is the essential function of the human spirit” Joseph Albers declared in his teachings at Black Mountain. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Sihvonen stayed focused and true to these teachings. His entire body of work remained clean, objective and flat, with no gestural or emotional contrivances.

Sihvonen continued his studies under the G.I Bill (1949 – 1950) at Louis Ribak’s Taos Valley Art School, seven years before he became a full time resident of Taos, with the support of a Wurlitzer Foundation grant. By 1950 he worked exclusively with abstract imagery. Many of Sihvonen’s paintings were large compared to those of other Taos moderns who rarely attempted to work much beyond five or six feet. There was little market for paintings on such a public, architectural scale in New Mexico at that time. The broader acceptance in the east of this large scale and the inclusion of his work in a major exhibit at MOMA led him to move to New York in 1967.

The Museum of Modern Art, NY
The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Dallas Museum of Fine Art, Dallas, TX
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Albuquerque Museum of Art, Albuquerque, NM
Fine Arts Museum, Santa Fe, NM

Pollock-Krasner Foundation, 1988
Yaddo Art Colony Fellowship, 1985
Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, 1985
Yaddo Art Colony Fellowship, 1980
National Endowment for the Arts, 1977
National Endowment for the Arts, 1967