Lot 38
JOHN MILLEI(B. 1958)Prototype for a Perfect World, 2012
13 – 27 February 2025, 17:00 PST
Online, Los AngelesUS$2,600 - US$3,600
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JOHN MILLEI (B. 1958)
Prototype for a Perfect World, 2012
signed
lithography and silkscreen monoprint
44 x 30 in.
111.8 x 76.2 cm.
This work is number six from a series of eleven unique monoprints.
signed
lithography and silkscreen monoprint
44 x 30 in.
111.8 x 76.2 cm.
This work is number six from a series of eleven unique monoprints.
Footnotes
Provenance
Courtesy of Cirrus Gallery and Cirrus Editions
A South California native, John Millei has been a central figure on the Los Angeles art scene for decades. A long-time Adjunct Professor of Painting at Claremont Graduate University and Professor of Fine Art at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, his teaching has had a profound impact on generations of contemporary artists. His former students include Mark Bradford, Laura Owens and later Sterling Ruby and Doug Aitken among many others.
Millei made a conscious decision to remain in California rather than gravitating to New York in the 1980s and has lived and worked between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara ever since.
Largely self-taught and the former studio assistant of Richard Diebenkorn, Millei began painting in the late 1970s. He was influenced by Jasper Johns's iconic series 0 through 9 (1960) and the Abstract Expressionist paintings of John Altoon, a prominent figure in the LA art scene of the 1950s and 1960s.
He is part of a generation of artists that includes Lari Pittman, Roger Herman and later Mary Weatherford, Mark Bradford and Laura Owens, who were responsible for shifting Los Angeles painting away from the cool slick minimalism of the Space and Light group, towards a more painterly and promiscuous kind of painting that trafficked in the space between figuration and representation, pop culture and Abstract Expressionism.