Monotype Plate
Thornton Willis was born in Pensacola, Florida in 1936. He received his BA from University of Southern Mississippi in 1962 and an MFA from University of Alabama in 1966. Willis moved to New York City in 1967 and established a studio in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. His work is associated with post-minimalist and lyrical abstraction of the New York School, an informal group of American artists of various media active in the 1950s and 60s. Willis’ works on view in the Vogel collection are from his Wedge series, created from 1974 -1982 and born from a formalist exploration of form and field. In a September 2013 interview with Geoform, Willis States that, “I don’t think of my paintings as pictures- I think of them as objects. I want my paintings to be very special kinds of objects that take their place in the world of objects that engage reach out and touch the viewer.”1
1. Interview with Thornton Willis for Geoform, accessed February 12, 2015, http://geoform.net/interviews/an-interview-with-artist-thornton-willis/