Melville

Price

Melville Price was born in 1920 in Kingston, New York. While he had a privileged early childhood, even keeping an art studio in the family home, The Great Depression, followed closely by the untimely death of his father in 1939, took its toll. Unable to afford formal higher education, Price studied informally at the Art Students League, the New School for Social Research, and the National Academy of Design. Working as a painter in the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal era, Price met artists Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline, the last of whom would become a lifelong friend. These artists’ social and intellectual association, due in no small part to their geographical proximity, created great mutual influence in which Price was included. His Abstract Expressionist work has been described as vigorous, intense, and highly energetic. Despite critical acclaim, financial success largely eluded Price, and he quietly kept a persistent studio practice while also teaching, first at the Museum School in Philadelphia, and then for over a decade at the University of Alabama. Price passed away in 1970, and has since been honored with retrospectives at the University of Alabama and the Corcoran Gallery, and collected by The Art Institute of Chicago and the Milwaukee Museum of Art, among many others.