Jan Müller
Jan Müller (December 27, 1922 – January 29, 1958) was a New York-based figurative expressionist artist of the 1950s. According to art critic Carter Ratcliff, "His paintings usually erect a visual architecture sturdy enough to support an array of standing, riding, levitating figures. Gravity is absent, banished by an indifference to ordinary experience." According to the poet John Ashbery, Müller "brings a medieval sensibility to neo-Expressionist paintings."
Also recorded as Jan Muller
Jan Müller
Jan Muller · The Cleveland Museum of Art · Edwin R. and Harriet Pelton Perkins Memorial Fund · CC0
- Name
- Jan Müller
- Birthplace
- Hamburg, Germany
- Place of death
- New York City, U.S.
- Occupation
- * Abstract expressionist painter
- Born
- 1922 · Hamburg.
- Died
- 1958 · New York City.
- Nationality
- United States
- Movements
- Expressionism
- Education
- Hans Hoffman School of Fine Art
- Languages
- German
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Documentary summary
Jan Müller (December 27, 1922 – January 29, 1958) was a New York-based figurative expressionist artist of the 1950s. According to art critic Carter Ratcliff, "His paintings usually erect a visual architecture sturdy enough to support an array of standing, riding, levitating figures. Gravity is absent, banished by an indifference to ordinary experience." According to the poet John Ashbery, Müller "brings a medieval sensibility to neo-Expressionist paintings."
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wikidata · Q6149574
In this article
Biography
Biography
Jan Müller studied at Hans Hoffman School of Fine Art. The recorded working language is German. Work by Jan Müller is recorded in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery and Harvard Art Museums.
Cupid and Psyche, c. 1600, by Jan Müller
Jan Muller · The Cleveland Museum of Art · Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
Portrait of Bernard Knipperdolling, c. 1615, by Jan Müller
Jan Muller · The Cleveland Museum of Art · Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Belden Greene
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Jan Müller • Birthplace — Hamburg, Germany • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Occupation — * Abstract expressionist painter • New York Figurative Expressionist painter
Biography
Biography
Jan Müller was born on December 27, 1922, in Hamburg, Germany. In 1933 his family fled the Nazis to Prague, and later to Bex-les-Bains, Switzerland; there he experienced the first of several attacks of rheumatic fever. He visited Paris in 1938 and two years later was apprehended and interned in a camp near Lyon. Shortly after the fall of Paris, Müller was released, at which time he moved to Ornaisons, near Narbonne. Following an unsuccessful attempt to escape to the United States from Marseille, he was able to cross the border into Spain in 1941 and proceed via Portugal to New York. Jan Müller began to study art in 1945. • The Art Students League of New York, New York City, for six months • Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts for five years He became a US citizen in 1957. Jan Müller died on January 29, 1958, at the age of thirty-five, in New York.
Selected solo exhibitions
Selected solo exhibitions
• 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958: Cooperative Hansa Gallery, New York City, which he founded with Allan Kaprow and Richard Stankiewicz • 1955, 1956: The Sun Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts • 1960: University of Minnesota • 1961: Zabriskie Gallery, NYC • 1962: Jan Müller: 1922–1958 organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC • 1970, 1971, 1972: Noah Goldowsky • 1976, 1977: Gruenebaum Gallery, NYC • 1980: Rosa Esman Gallery, NYC
Selected group exhibitions
Selected group exhibitions
• 1952: 813 Broadway (Gallery), NYC • 1953: The Art Institute of Chicago • 1955: University of Minnesota • 1955, 1956: Stable Show, Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, Stable Gallery, NYC • 1957: The New York School, Second Generation, Jewish Museum, NYC; Young America, Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC • 1958: Carnegie, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Festival of Two Worlds, Spoleto, Perugia, Italy • 1958, 1959: Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA • 1959: New Images of Man, Museum of Modern Art, NYC • 1960: American Federation of Arts, circ., NYC • 2009: Days Lumberyard Studios, Provincetown, MA, 1915-1972, ACME Fine Art, Boston, MA;
Identity
Identity
Jan Müller is recorded as a citizen of United States. Recorded with the occupation designer. Recorded with the occupation painter.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1922
Jan Müller was born on 27 December 1922.
1958
Jan Müller died on 29 January 1958.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Hamburg.
Birth place
New York City.
Death place
Books
• Paul Schimmel and Judith E Stein, The Figurative fifties: New York figurative expressionism, (Newport Beach, Calif.: Newport Harbor Art Museum: New York: Rizzoli, 1988.) • Barbara Rose, American Art Since 1900; a critical history. (New York, F. A. Praeger, 1967.) OCLC: 256107 p. 236, repr., 237 • Irving Sandler, The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties, (New York, Harper & Row, 1978.), p. 124, fig. 86 • Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000.) pp. 32,38 • Marika Herskovic, American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless: An Illustrated Survey With Artists' Statements, Artwork and Biographies. (New York School Press, 2009.). p. 172-175
Collections
• Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina • Museum of Modern Art, NYC • Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey • Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Paul Schimmel and Judith E Stein, Carter Ratcliff assay, Selfhood Paints a Self-Portrait (Newport Beach, Calif. : Newport Harbor Art Museum : New York : Rizzoli, 1988.)
- 2.John Ashbery, "Jan Muller," Art News 56, no. 2 (January 1958), pp.16-17.
- 3.Vivian Endicott Barnett; Thomas M. Messer; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ‘’ Handbook, the Guggenheim Museum collection, 1900-1980; Jan Müller, 1922-1958’’ (New York : The Museum, 1980.) , pp.464-465,
References
Citations
References
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authority record
General reference
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 16 August 2026.
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