Kendall Shaw

George Kendall Shaw (March 30, 1924 – October 18, 2019) was an American painter who was based in New Orleans, with a career spanning a number of art styles—ranging from abstract expressionism to pop art to minimalism to pattern and design to color field—with heightened emotion, pattern, shape, and vivid color predominant.

In 1943, he enlisted in the United States Navy, where he was a radioman on an SPB Dauntless dive-bomber while searching for German submarines off the mid-Atlantic coast.

From 1950–1951, he took courses in art as well as organic chemistry at Louisiana State University, studying with visiting painter O. Louis Guglielmi.

In New York, he continued his relationship with Guglielmi at The New School, also studying there with Stuart Davis and at the Brooklyn Museum with Ralston Crawford.

[3] In 1953, he left Stauffer Chemical, determined to pursue his art, and went back to the Deep South where he tried his hand at oil prospecting.

Instead, minute interactions of adjacent colors set up mosaic-like patterns and rhythmic grids of small rectangles and circles.

[15] He experimented using small mirrors as part of the color patterns to reflect light back to the viewer,[16] as well as incorporating fabric, buttons and ribbons.

Color patterns weave throughout the paintings like quilting, interspersed with bits of ribbon, fabric and gemstones referencing his grandmother's embroidery.

[17][18][19] Like others in Pattern and Decoration, he became interested in theatrical costuming and set design, and worked with Herbert Machiz, the director, on a number of stage productions, including ‘’Knights of the Roundtable” by Jean Cocteau and “The First Reader”, a musical with words by Gertrude Stein.

[25] While the paintings are abstract and not representational, they use Shaw's scientific view that the world is made up of energized particles in constant flux.

[31] The intent is to make the wall less of a barrier or an enclosure to the observer by giving life to the painting-wall as an expanded picture plane that brings unity into the space.

[34] The modular paintings are based on the Abstract Expressionist view "that reflected color from a panel is vibrating energy which in a large field creates an emotional reaction from an observer than could lead to a sublime feeling."

In January 2017, the National Arts Club in New York City honored Mr. Shaw for his artistic contributions by making him an Honorary Lifetime member.