Robert Dash

American, 1931–2013

Robert Dash was born in downtown New York in 1931. Home schooled for much of his childhood and adolescence, he escaped the city to pursue studies in literature and anthropology at The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Following a year abroad in Italy, Dash returned to New York as a writer, art critic and book editor, painting at night in his parents’ apartment not far from Cedar Bar. Having no formal training as a painter, but with growing enthusiasm and an awareness of Abstract Expressionism’s significance, he “bought a can of white and a can of black and sloshed them around.” In 1959, Dash traveled to Maine with Alex Katz, and soon thereafter began visiting Fairfield Porter in his home and studio in Southampton; as close friends and renowned artists, they opened up the dialogue, exerting both an intellectual and tangible influence upon his approach to painting. He had his first show in 1960.

In 1967 Dash relocated permanently to Sagaponack, to the home he christened Madoo (old Scots for “my dove”), what was to become perhaps his penultimate achievement. In this place, he was freely devoted to painting, poetry, gardening—every endeavor approached with the same intensity of acute exploration and experimentation. Madoo became a forum for creative discourse and critique, marked by the arcadian confluence of art, music, literature and poetry, and a refuge for many—John Ashbery, Fairfield Porter, William deKooning, Jimmy Schuyler, amongst others, all with mutual respect and influence.

Throughout the 1970s, Dash was regarded as an accomplished painter for his depictions of a now all but vanished Sagaponack landscape. Considered quintessentially Dash, the paintings combine flat expanses balanced by a vigorous brushstroke, all with a color sensibility and palate uniquely his own. Widely exhibited and in notable public and private collections, these paintings truthfully represent the time and place in which they were made. The 1980s and 90s ushered in a return to explorations in Expressionism, marked by a gestural brushstroke, loaded surfaces and personal iconography leading up to his highly regarded Florilegium and Sagg Main series from the 2000s.

Robert Dash’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Holland, England, and Germany as well as numerous major American art museums and galleries. He has been included in many group exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, Yale University and the Fine Arts Gallery University of Missouri. His work is also featured in museum collections at the Modern Art Museum, Munich; Guggenheim Museum; Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts; the Corcoran Gallery; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; and the Parrish Art Museum. In addition, his archive of poetry and garden writings was acquired by the Beinecke Library at Yale University in 2011.

Courtesy of The Madoo Conservancy