Howard William Mehring

Background

Howard Mehring was born on February 19, 1931 in Washington, District of Columbia, United States, into the family of Charles Fred and Florence Anna Mehring.

Education

Howard attended McKinley Hich School. He then entered Wilson Teachers College here. In 1953, he graduated first in his class. Finally, Howard entered Catholic University.

Career

Howard's career, though brief, was brilliant. In 1953, aged 21, Mr. Mehring worked as a student Berkowitz. It was through Berkowitz's Washington workshop Center that Mr. Mehring met many of the early members of the Washington color school. Howard's first commericial show was a "New Faces in Washington" exhibition mounted by Franz Baders' Gallery in 1955. Mr. Mehring later showed with the Origo, Jefferson Place, and Pyramid galleries.

As the international art world began to take notice of the Washington color painters, his career seemed to flourish. Such collectors as Harry Abrams, the publisher of art books, and such curators as Alfred Barr, of the Museum of Modern Art, and Walter Hopps, then of the Pasadena Museum, purchased pictures from the Mehring show that opened in New York at the A.M. Sachs Gallery in 1966.

Though in the last years of his life he returned to drawing, it appears that in 1968 he decided he was finished. A room of Mr. Mehring's paintings from 1969 to 1962, borrowed from collector Vincent Melzac, was on view at the Phillips Collection. His permanent collections include Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of Modern Art, The Tate Gallery, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Gallery of Art, Los Angeles County Museum, and San Francisco Museum of Art.

Mehring, who maintained no permanent residence and lived in a Maryland motel, was visiting friends when he became ill and was taken to the hospital in Annapolis. He suffered two heart attacks, and the second one became fatal.

Achievements

• Between 1957 and 1968 Mr. Mehring made a serie of striking, airy pictures, the best of which rank with the most innovative abstract paintings of that time.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Amarillo

  • Untitled

  • Triple Double

  • Blue Green and Violet

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Segwehce

  • Blue Note

  • Untitled

  • Black Jack

  • Untitled

  • Center Split

  • Untitled

  • Untitled (Summer)

  • Chroma Double

  • The Sound of Yellow and Blue

  • Japanese Composition

  • Spring Is

  • All Green

  • Double Red

  • Black

  • Untitled

Views

Mr. Mehring found a way of opening the field through hue instead of line. But as he kept on painting, and began to use hard edges, that lovely, airy openness began to lock. Though they retained a mood of urgency and passion, his works grew ever stricter until 1968, when the artist ceased to paint.

Quotations: "I am using the same basic composition over and over again. I never seem to exhaust its possibilities... Conceptually I am often way ahead of where I am painting, but I discipline myself to stay with each series until I am sure I am through."

Membership

• Washington color school

Personality

He visited the National Gallery of Art almost every day. He loved to discuss painting. When asked why he had stopped, he grew evasive. Some of his admirers felt he'd lost his nerve.

Quotes from others about the person

• Mehring was the closest painter to Morris Louis in delicacy… his work is simultaneously delicate and bold, a rare combination also present in Jackson Pollock’s work."
  
  "In many ways he was the most lyrical of us all."
  
  "Some artists blossom when they're young, and then repeat themselves until they grow stale. Mehring was not one of them. His art developed freely. He had the insight - or the guts - to stop at the right point. He was among the handful of guiding, revolutionary painters of its time. His contribution stands.

Interests

• Reichian therapy

• Artists

  Jackson Pollack, Vermeer, Lenny Tristano, Charlie Parker and Thleonious Monk

• Music & Bands

  progressive jazz

Connections

Father:

Charles Fred

Mother:

Florence Anna Mehring

Brother:

Warren Chaires

niece:

Karen Corey

Friend:

Thomas Downing

References

• Howard Mehring: A Retrospective Exhibition
  1977
• Howard Mehring: Classical abstraction : paintings from the Vincent Melzac collection
  2002
• Ten Washington artists: 1950-1970;: Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Howard Mehring, Sam Gilliam, Blaine Larson, Michael Clark, J. L. Knight [and] Rockne Krebs
  1970
• The Washington Color Painters: Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Howard Mehring and Paul Reed
  1965