Tune for Duke Ellington

About Tune for Duke Ellington

A jazz lover, modernist Milly Ristvedt pays tribute to a beloved artist in this compelling abstract painting. The colour field is dominated by a soft gray, a band of deep red at the base and horizontal lines in hot pink run in rows across the painting. A fine border of complementary and contrasting colours--blue, orange, purple and black add interest.

Always experimenting with form and palette, Ristvedt understands the expressive power of colour.

“I worked in several different directions at once; more influenced by Morris Louis’s Unfurled paintings, and the relation of colour shapes to the paintings’ edge found in Jules Olitski’s open fields, than the hard-edge minimalist structures of earlier work.” Milly Ristvedt

Born in British Columbia, Ristvedt studied at the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr University) and had her first solo exhibit at the Carmen Lamanna Gallery in Toronto. In the late 1960s, Ristvedt shared a studio with famed Canadian painter Jack Bush, met art critic Clement Greenberg and was inspired by American painters Jules Olitiski and Frank Stella. Her work has been included in many publications. She was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2004 and honoured with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. She has won seven Canada Council awards and two Ontario Arts Council awards and had over 50 solo exhibitions and been part of countless group shows.

Milly Ristvedt is represented exclusively by Oeno Gallery.