Robert Dash 1934 —

Dash never formally studied painting, he developed a strong interest in the abstract expressionists, particularly De Kooning, at The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, which he attended in part to escape the city.  After college Robert Dash spent a year in Italy and upon returning to New York City worked for Arts and then Art News, while painting at night. He had his first show in 1960. Since then, he has painted, written and gardened near Sagg Pond on eastern Long Island, at residence among the changeable celebration of plantings, paths, views and architectural expressions of Madoo, a much-admired garden conservatory of his own making.

A longtime Hamptons resident, Dash’s works have been exhibited in one-man exhibitions in Holland, England, and Germany as well as numerous major American art galleries. He also participated in many group exhibitions including the Museum of Modern Art, Yale University and the Fine Arts Gallery University of Missouri. His works are also featured in museum collections including the Butler Institute; University Art Museum – University of Califormial;  Corcoran Gallery;; Modern Art Museum, Munich; Guggenheim Museum; Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts; and Yale University Art Museum;  

Paul Cummings interviewing painter Robert Dash: What Abstract Expressionist painters interested you?

Interview with Robert Dash on September 22, 1974 by Paul Cummings for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Robert Dash: Oh, de Kooning. He was the one that taught me that paint does everything, and paint is art, the wielding of it, the manipulation of it; what it does. And paint is your deciding factor. I don't think anybody else interested me. At times I was moderately interested but the interest did not stick. De Kooning is always satisfying even when the painting may be weak. There is always such a hand involved and in such a weighty, theoretic manner, that he has always intoxicated me. It is like, oh, I don't know, the opera singer who is quintessentially the singer's singer or something like that. I don't know, even when they are speaking it is interesting. It doesn't matter what they are singing or what they are saying.

Paul Cummings: One can't look at your paintings and say that you are influenced by de Kooning.

Robert Dash: No, but I was, and I tried it. It was a difficult act to follow.

Robert Dash is known for his Hamptons paintings.  Dash ‘s painterly  sensuality is purely American.  It is clear and direct, recording the commonplace.  Never at a loss for subject matter among the fields and hedgerows of the Hamptons, Robert Dash has long been associated with a with a sensual realm over the merely intellectual, favoring the “ultimate reality” of immediate physical experience.

An important source for modern and contemporary American & European Art in East Hampton, New York & worldwide, Janet Lehr Fine Arts' spectacular wide-ranging inventory consists of unique paintings, drawings, large & small scale sculpture, monotypes, prints and photographs  by Ansel Adams, Milton Avery, Richard Avedon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Fernando Botero, Cartier-Bresson, Marc Chagall, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Willem De Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Thomas Eakins, Childe Hassam, David Hockney, Winslow Homer, Wolf Kahn, Jeff Koons, Fernand Leger, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, Thomas Moran, Henry Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, Cindy Sherman, Charles Sheeler, Bert Stern, Alfred Stieglitz, Andy Warhol, Carleton E Watkins, Tom Wesselmann and Andrew Wyeth.

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