Milton Wilson was born in Portland, Oregon in 1923. He served in World War II, and then studied at the Portland Museum Art School (now known as Pacific Northwest College of Art) under Louis Bunce and later at the California School of Fine Arts and the San Francisco Institute of Art. His art is characterized by a vibrant palette and bold, fluid brush strokes with an almost calligraphic quality. The bulk of his work is abstract--multi-layered, voluptuous riots of lines and curves and shapes--but in his later years faces and figures began to reemerge in his work, which often has a sly, playful quality.

Milton Wilson was one of the co-founders of the New Gallery for Contemporary Art, which was open from 1959 to 1962 in ...