William Pettet

Art Brokerage: William Pettet American Artist: As a major figure in the art world for over four decades, William Pettet has long been a pioneer of alternative painting techniques. He began his career as a painter in the early 1960s, living in Los Angeles and experimenting with the emerging Minimalist genre. Employing spare and geometric compositions, Pettet generally confined his palate to a single color, cultivating a somber and austere aesthetic. In 1969, Pettet moved to New York and radically altered his technique. He adopted much of the Abstract Expressionists' approach by painting on unstretched canvases laid over the floor, but quickly pushed past the bounds of Abstract Expressionism by infusing his work with new methodologies - incorporating spray guns, air compressors, knives and squeegees into his process. The results were stunning, as Pettet crafted highly lyrical canvases that shunned the asceticism of his early work. The artist also began to imbue his painting with a dynamic sense of color, which afforded a more natural appearance and lent the work a strong emotional and psychological depth. Furthermore, Pettet demonstrated a newfound appreciation for art's theoretical components, as he neatly folded color in sumptuous layers while maintaining the integrity of the flat canvas - a technique that embraced the art world's fascination with an art object's 'truthfulness' but exacted a more fluid appearance from the two-dimensional surface. Pettet's success on both coasts proved an integral component of art history's course over the last fifty years, as the attention he received in New York prompted artists and collectors alike to look Westward for further innovation. He has been honored with many solo exhibitions and is featured in the collections of numerous important museums, including the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Listings wanted.