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Nassos Daphnis

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33-66, 1966

33-66, 1966

Nassos Daphnis (1914 – 2010)

Nassos Daphnis was born in Krockeai, Greece on July 23, 1914. He came to the United States in 1930. Self-taught, he had his first one-man exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Gallery, New York, in 1938 and in 1969 he had retrospectives at Albright-Knox in Buffalo, New York and the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. He is represented at the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

He is best known as a member of a group of young painters who, in the late 1950s, broke away from abstract expressionism with its emphasis on gestural and expressive brushstrokes and explored the hard edge color image. He favored clear and sharp images which formed an incomplete gestalt, carrying the eye outside the limits of the canvas. He taught at Horace Mann School, New York
Daphnis continued to pursue the intricacies of geometric painting with undiminished fervor and his own enviable energy until well over the age of eighty.

Biography

AWARDS

1999
Arts Achievement Award, Queens Museum Art, New York

1992
Richard A. Florsheim Art Fund Award, USA

1986
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, USA
The Francis J. Greenburger Foundation Award, USA

1977
Guggenheim Fellowship, New York

1972
New England 350th Celebration Exhibition, USA

1971
National Endowment of the Arts Grant Award, USA
Boca Raton Museum Award, Boca Raton, FL

1966
National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities Award, USA
Pittsburgh Award

1962
Ford Foundation Award, USA
Purchase Award: Painting donated to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

PUBLIC COMMISSIONS

1971
Wall Painting at West Side Highway and 47th Street, City Walls, Incorporated, New York

1969
Wall Painting at 26th Street and Madison Avenue, City Walls, Incorporated, New York

Sources include:
The Oxford Companion to 20th Century Art, edited by Harold Osborne
Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers
Written and compiled by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.

Biography from the Archives of AskART

 

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Baltimore Museum, Baltimore, MD
Boca Raton Museum of Art
Brooklyn Museum, New York
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
Empire State Plaza Art Collection
Guggenheim Museum, New York
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
Jewish Museum of Florida
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
Reading Public Museum, Reading, PA
RISD Museum of Art, Providence, RI
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI
Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York