Marc Selwyn Fine Art is pleased to announce Lee Mullican: Paintings from the 1970’s by the late California artist.

Lee Mullican, along with Wolfgang Paalen and Gordon Onslow Ford, was known as a member of “the Dynaton.” This group of artists, named after the Greek word for “the possible,” acted as a bridge between the European Surrealist and American Abstract Expressionist schools. Disbanding shortly after its seminal exhibition in 1951 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Dynaton explored the subconscious mind, mysticism, automatism, and the influences of ancient cultures. Mullican remained true to these ideas but went on to develop his own highly personal imagery.

This exhibition will focus on a period of the artist’s work which has not been explored in depth in recent exhibitions. In these works from the seventies, Mullican constructs his compositions using the palette knife technique for which he has become so well known. Consistent with the Dynaton’s exploration of the subconscious, these paintings become ritualistic objects of contemplation and introspection. They seem linked to the prevailing minimalist aesthetic of their time, yet evidence of Mullican’s primitive influences, intuitive mark-making and jewel-like color.

Lee Mullican was born in 1919 in Chickasha, Oklahoma and died in Los Angeles in 1998. He began drawing and painting as a child and continued in college becoming a topological draftsman in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Mullican’s works are included in the permanent collections of numerous important institutions such as the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, among others.

The exhibition coincides with the release of “Finding Lee Mullican,” a documentary feature film written, directed and edited by Mullican’s son, John.