“I never plan my color more than five stripes ahead and often change my mind before I reach the third stripe.”
– Gene Davis

By the 1960s, Washington D.C. born Gene Davis had become a central figure of the Washington Color School who’s members included Kenneth Noland, Howard Mehring, Morris Lewis, and Howard Mehring. Their 1965 exhibition called The Washington Color Painters at the now defunct Washington Gallery of Modern Art, and which traveled to the Walker Art Center, solidified the style as Washington’s signature art movement. Though he worked in a variety of media, Davis’ best-known paintings, executed over a twenty-seven year period, are the vertical stripe works in acrylic on unprimed canvas, including our Hive from 1969.