Oli sihvonen biography of albert

BiographyOLI SIHVONEN (1921-1991), first lived in Taos in 1949.

On a warm blue ground lie five diagonally compressed ellipses of identical size: three cold blue, one brick red, and one alizarin.

Their careful spatial and color relationships push and bend the parameters of the canvas, and alter the viewer's balance and sense of personal space. 40

—Vivian Milford, 1983 [cite source]

Josef Albers's influence came to Taos with the arrival of one of his students, Oli Sihvonen, who studied with Albers at Black Mountain College, North Carolina from 1946 to 1948.

For Albers, “Abstraction is the essential function of the Human Spirit.” 41 For Sihvonen, this meant that a work of art intended no representation of or reference to any other identifiable thing. A painting made in this manner included flat color, no romantic evocations, no gestural expressiveness, but instead a clean, pure, effortless look.

In Taos, Sihvonen continued his studies at Louis Ribak's Taos Val