Amaryllis, 1984
oil on board
12" x 9"
Sally Michel Avery (1902-2003) was an American artist and illustrator who created figure, landscapes, and genre scenes. Together with her husband Milton Avery, she developed what became known as the “Avery style,” an aesthetic sensibility of playful color combinations and flattened painting plane, influenced by folk art, Tonalism, and Fauvism.
Born in Brooklyn, Michel began to work as a freelance illustrator for Macy’s and other publications after high school. Michel also took evening classes at New York's Arts Students League. She met her husband Milton Avery while summering in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and they closely collaborated in their artistry.
Michel had a solo show in 1981 at the Waverly Gallery in New York. Solo retrospectives of her work have been exhibited at the University of Iowa Museum of Art and the Fresno Art Museum. Michel's work is the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art (Corcoran Collection), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the Israel Museum, the University of Iowa Museum of Art, the Holyoke Museum; and more.
