Ernest Briggs (1923-1984)

Ernest Briggs was born on December 24, 1923, in San Diego. He served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, stationed in Tampa, FL and then deployed to India.

After the war, Briggs studied painting at the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco, later enrolling at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute). It was at the latter institution where he met and ultimately thrived under the tutelage of Clyfford Still, Ad Reinhardt, David Park, and Mark Rothko. New York Times critic Grace Glueck wrote that the "painterly rhetoric" of his teacher Clyfford Still was a lasting influence on Briggs, which is plainly evident upon reviewing the entirety of his oeuvre.

Considered a member of the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, Briggs left California for New York in 1953, where he began exhibiting at the Stable Gallery. During the 1950s, he was able to make a name for himself through his explosive and dynamic style as part of the New York City avant-garde. Briggs brought to the east coast a fresh, lively aesthetic, reflecting what was termed a "radical west coast style" that he had continued to refine since his days at the California School of Fine Arts.

He participated in several Whitney Museum Annuals, and in 1956 was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s seminal exhibition Twelve Americans, curated by Dorothy Miller. He taught painting and sculpture at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1961 until the time of his death at age 61.

Briggs' work was shown and collected widely, appearing in the permanent collections of major museums around the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, San Francisco Museum of Art, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Smithsonian Institute.

Source: Wikipedia

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