Three Birds
1952
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
woodcut in black on wove paper
Dimensions
image: 24.13 × 63.5 cm (9 1/2 × 25 in.) sheet: 30.48 × 73.34 cm (12 × 28 7/8 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Reba and Dave Williams Collection, Gift of Reba and Dave Williams
Accession Number
2008.115.719
Art Historical Context
**Three Birds** (1952) by Milton Avery is a striking woodcut print in black on wove paper, 24.13 × .5 cm for the image and slightly larger for the sheet. Housed in the National Gallery Art's Reba and Williams Collection, this work exemplifies Avery's mastery of simplified forms drawn from nature. Avery (1885–1965), a pivotal American modernist, bridged representational art and abstraction with his poetic, flattened compositions—often featuring birds, landscapes, and figures in a dreamlike harmony of color and shape. Though rendered in monochrome here, his signature style shines through in the ...
About the Artist
Milton Avery
Milton Avery, born on March 7, 1885, in Altmar, New York, to a working-class family—his father a tanner—grew up in modest circumstances. After his family's move to the Hartford area of Connecticut in 1898, he took on various manual jobs, including as a mechanic, clerk, and construction worker, to support himself and relatives following family tragedies. His artistic path began around 1905 at the C...