ZOX Larry

Zox studied under German Modern artist George Grosz at the Des Moines Art Center. His early works followed the then-radical direction of Abstract Expressionism. After moving to New York, in 1958, he began to work in collage, using roughly torn pieces of paper stapled to board. Toward the end of the 1960s, however, he had developed a distinctive abstract geometric style with hard-edge shapes arranged symmetrically and asymmetrically on unprepared raw canvas. In 1973, the Whitney Museum of American art organized a major solo show of his work and, the following year, his work was included in the inaugural exhibition of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. As an extension of his interest in materiality, which began in his collage works, Zox’s intentional exposure of raw canvas in his paintings emphasizes the objecthood of his work. In Multi from Zone I (1965), the painted sections float atop the raw canvas, as if ‘collaged’ in paint. The element of repetition in the work prompts the viewer to search for pattern, for form, but any hints of illusion quickly slide out of view.