Stanley Whitney

[1][2] The third of four children, his father was a real estate agent and accountant, and his mother worked for the board of education in nearby Philadelphia.

The family were part of Bryn Mawr's small, working-class black community, and lived in an apartment above a store owned by his father.

He also spent time studying at Skidmore College, where Philip Guston befriended and served as an early mentor to Whitney, and in an exchange program at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.

[10][11] Whitney has engaged in abstraction since early in his career, and is best known for his paintings which take the form of "grids" of color, arranged in four rows.

He arrived at this mode while working in Italy in the 1990s, after the sights of stone blocks in ancient monuments and closely-stacked funeral urns at the Museo Etrusco Guarnacci led Whitney to reconcile his concepts of space and color in painting: “When I understood that, I felt I had the last piece of the puzzle.

"[5][12] Other influences cited by Whitney have included Paul Cézanne, Piet Mondrian, Agnes Martin, and the quilters of Gee's Bend.

[15][16] Whitney worked in "relative obscurity" for the majority of his career, often failing to sell paintings; he did not stage an exhibition in a public institution until he was 68 years old.

[30] His paintings have also broadly appeared in group shows, notably including Quiet as it's Kept (2002), an influential exhibition of black American abstract artists which was curated by David Hammons and staged at Christine König Gallery in Vienna.