Jack Youngerman, who is known for his constructions and paintings, was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1926. He studied art at the University of North Carolina from 1944 to 1946 under a wartime navy training program, and graduated from the University of Missouri in 1947.

Between 1947 and 1956, Youngerman visited Europe, working on his art at the School of Beaux-Arts in 1947 and 1948, where his painting was influenced by constructivism. He later worked on some architectural projects in Iraq and Lebanon for French architect Michel Ecochard. There, he was impressed by the clarity of the atmosphere and the bright sunlight. He took part in several exhibitions abroad and in the United States. In New York and Paris he was involved in theater design.

In 1956, he settled in New York and showed his works in 1959 at the Museum of Modern Art. Interested in optical effects, he created illusions with a series of prints based on a single geometric form. With the central figure remaining constant, he created color variations to create subtle changes in the way the object is perceived with respect to its surrounding area. As Youngerman painted over the years, his forms changed from the geometric to the more abstract, and the number of elements in his paintings were reduced in number, usually working with a few large, diagonal forms. His paint applications changed from the thick use of paint, to the smooth. His interests were in the organic form, relating to living things in general rather than to specific objects. His works often suggest the appearance of plants, flames, and leaves.

His constructions and paintings may be seen at the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Albright Museum of Art in Buffalo, New York.

JACK ALBERT YOUNGERMAN (1926-2020)

Jack Youngerman, like many of his peers, turned toward hard-edged abstraction in response to the dominance of Abstract Expressionism. His cool, flat organic and geometric compositions, often on shaped canvases, were the antithesis of the emotive and gestural paintings of the earlier movement. In mid-career, about 1977, Youngerman began to translate his aesthetic into freestanding pieces in cast fiberglass and resin sculpture.

Youngerman was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and at the age of three moved to Louisville, Kentucky. His studies at the University of Missouri, from 1943 to 1944, were interrupted by his attendance in the United States Navy Officers Training Program at the University of North Carolina, where he also took his first art class. During 1946, he was stationed at Norfolk, Virginia, and Boston with the Atlantic fleet; after his discharge from the Navy, he returned to the University of Missouri for his bachelor’s degree in journalism. Following graduation, Youngerman moved to Paris to study at the École des Beaux Arts under the auspices of the G.I. Bill. While living abroad for eight years, he visited France’s historic monuments, the studio of Constantin Brancusi and other artists, and traveled extensively through Europe and the Middle East.

In late 1956, Youngerman moved to SoHo in downtown New York, not far from where Ellsworth Kelly, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg were living and working. In 1958, the Betty Parsons Gallery hosted the first of seven solo exhibitions; the following year, Dorothy Miller selected several of his paintings for the groundbreaking exhibition Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art. Over the next decade, the Worcester Art Museum, the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., and Galerie Lawrence in Paris mounted one-person exhibitions, while the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Corcoran Gallery included his work in group shows. A retrospective covering forty years was on display at the Guggenheim in 1985. His work is represented in many of the country’s most prestigious museum collections, including the Guggenheim, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Youngerman was given a National Endowment for the Arts award first in 1972 and again in 1984. During the 1980s, he experimented with sculptural forms—both reliefs and three-dimensional pieces. He served as a visiting artist or artist-in-residence at Yale University, Dartmouth College, Hunter College, and the American Academy in Rome

The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina
thejohnsoncollection.org