'Bleu et jaune (Blue and Yellow).' Serigraph. Signed and edition in pencil lower left and inscribed lower right. 1966. 33 3/4 x 23 1/2"; 35 1/4 x 24 3/4" (framed) Provenance: Rubiner Gallery Michigan.

Following his service in the US Navy during World War II, Jack Youngerman enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris as part of the G.I. Bill. There he struck up a lifelong friendship with fellow student Ellsworth Kelly and both were first exposed to current trends in postwar abstraction. During his time in the French capital, Youngerman digested the modernist examples of Henri Matisse’s lyrical cut outs and Jean Arp’s woodcuts which informed his early practice. In 1956, the artist returned to New York where he and his young family took up residence in the budding artists’ colony centered on Manhattan’s Coenties Slip. There he could count Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, James Rosenquist and his old friend Kelly as neighbors. In response to the dominance that abstract expressionism held over the New York scene, Youngerman synthesised hard-edge, constructivist and geometric abstractionist tendencies that defined his mature style. In the 1960s, Youngerman relied on a variation of two to three primary colors to create organic, floral and fan-like compositions such as ‘Bleu et jaune’ which playfully resembles a Rorschach ink blot.

Provenance: Rubiner Gallery, Michigan.

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