Richard Pousette-Dart was an American Abstract Expressionist painter. He was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota and grew up in a culturally rich environment in Valhalla, New York. His father, Nathaniel Pousette was a painter and writer on art and his mother, Flora Louise Dart was a musician and poet. Pousette-Dart had no formal art training, he spent considerable time as a child watching his father at the easel and discussing painting with him. He moved to Manhattan in 1937. To support himself, he first served as assistant to the sculptor Paul Manship, his father’s friend and then worked as a secretary in a photographic studio.

During the 1940s, he was active in the avant-garde New York art world; he was a pioneering Abstract Expressionist and a visionary of the New York School. His early paintings reflect his interest in Cubism, biomorphic Surrealism, Jungian and Freudian theories of the unconscious, and African and Native American Art. Despite significant contact with all members of this group, Pousette-Dart chose to leave New York City in 1951 to preserve his artistic freedom. He remained independent throughout his career, creating transcendental paintings of extraordinary depht and radiance. Powerful dualities – circle and square, man and cosmos, spirit and body, light and substance – are central to his work. “I strive to express the spiritual nature of the Universe. Painting for me is a dynamic balance and wholeness of life; it is mysterious and transcending, yet solid and real.” In 1951, he moved to Rockland County, New York where he lived with his wife, the poet Evelyn Gracey, until his death in 1992.