Arthur Monroe

Arthur Monroe, 1935 - 2019

“If you are a painter you have to start solving problems.” Arthur Monroe

The late Oakland-based artist Arthur Monroe was born in the Bedford Stuyvesant District of Brooklyn, New York in 1935. His art reflects his participation within some of the most influential cultural movements of the twentieth century.

Monroe was first exposed to Abstract Expressionist concepts in the 1950s by friend and fellow artist Harvey Tristan Cropper, who was studying at the Art Students League in New York. In defiance of prevailing conventions of technique and subject, Abstract Expressionism placed emphasis on the physical process of painting, thereby allowing the artist to be in-and respond to-the moment. This was aptly summarized by the influential art critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952: “What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.”

The movement appealed to Monroe for its potential to express new and personal visual truths. Working directly on the canvas without preliminary sketches or premeditation, he painted what came to his mind. His initial concepts were transmuted into visual images, symbolic representations of inner truths. He adhered to those artistic roots, which continually provided him with a means of expression in his search for personal pictorial realities.

Monroe was committed to working on a grand scale, electrifying the space between the artwork and the viewer. Through enlarged forms, amplified color and emphatic brushwork, the monumental canvas became an expression of the artist’s psyche. Paint was applied with directness and immediacy across the picture plane, pulling in or pushing away or redacting. Brush strokes are visible, even in areas that initially seem to be solid blocks of color, and accelerate the overall movement on the canvas.

Art—non-objective art in particular-is defined by form, color and gesture. Monroe’s pure expressions rely very little on overt form, but form clearly underlies the composition. He uses vibrant color to express and evoke emotion. His expressive gestures and energetic spatial improvisations demonstrate a balance of structure and chance, control and chaos within the physical action of painting.

His close friend, the eminent jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd, recalled, “Arthur was a great painter, philosopher, sage, and seer. Every corner, every surface of his studio held a layer of his consciousness, and in the pure white light of the East Bay, ‘knowingness’ was revealed.”