Self-Portrait #2
Artist
Jan Müller
(American, 1922 - 1958)
Date1955
MediumOil on board
DimensionsOverall: 26 x 19 3/4 in. (66 x 50.2 cm)
ClassificationsModern art
Credit LineGift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Object number71.2125
Terms
- Portrait
- Face
On View
Not on viewLabel TextJan Müller American (b. Hamburg, Germany, 1922–1958) Self-Portrait #2, 1955 Oil on board Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.2125 In Jan Müller’s Self-Portrait, facial features slowly emerge from a field of vigorous brushwork. Thick, white paint evokes a light source directed at the artist’s face from the left, while brown strokes on the right suggest shadow. Müller was a part of a second generation of New York school artists who followed in the footsteps of painters Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning and continued a strong, gestural mode of painting. Similar to Larry Rivers, Richard Stankiewicz, and Grace Hartigan, Müller merged figurative painting with Abstract Expressionism’s raw, emotional brushwork. Of Jewish decent, Müller’s family immigrated to the United States in 1941 to flee Nazi persecution. He studied with Hans Hofmann for five years in New York and in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Tragically, he died at the youthful age of thirty-six from a heart condition.
