John Altoon is an important American artist whose significant career blossomed in Los Angeles, California until his untimely death in 1969 at age 43. A seminal artist in both American and West Coast art history, John Altoon was an influential member of Wallace Berman’s infamous Semina circle and the Ferus Gallery’s core group of abstract action painters. Last year the Los Angeles County Museum of Art organized a major retrospective of Altoon’s work, illuminating an inspiring career that reverberates today. 

Altoon deftly assimilated his background as an illustrator with his “…keen awareness of the European and East Coast avant-garde—especially the automatism and free association integral to surrealism and action painting…”1 A true painter’s painter, Altoon’s visceral and energetically organic forms reflect an exceptionally physical and direct art practice. The immediacy felt in his work drew the attention of curator Walter Hopps, who was interested not only in Altoon’s raw gestural quality but in the anti-conformist and political subtexts as well.
 
The John Altoon Estate  holds rare, never-before-seen paintings and drawings that demonstrate Altoon’s incredible relationship with line, color and subject matter that continues to resonate with artists today.

Visit kohngallery.com for the latest information on upcoming exhibitions