Photo: Portrait of Lester by Bob Ellison, est. 1970 “I get into a theme, and I get into it until I don’t like it.” Lester Johnson (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/arts/design/09johnson.html) "Lester Johnson’s work is a profound meditation on our being in the world, with all the ambiguities between self and society. A psychologist and a sociologist can use these terms to describe the structure of both but they can’t tell you how it feels to be a self among others and witness to the masses of people in the modern city who define themselves as a single self. What do all those definitions look like? The hand knows more than the conscious mind. Lester trusted it to reveal secrets about our world and self that the mind could only over-simplify." (http://martinmugar.blogspot.com/2016/10/essay-on-show-of-lester-johnsons-work.html) Johnson remains a cult figure, particularly for those who care about painting, which, let’s face it, is a cult made up of warring factions. He is a full-fledged member of the faction to which the terms “painterly,” “expressionist,” and “figurative” have accrued, but which are too diluted to be of any use..... Done between the late '50s and early '70s, Johnson’s paintings of anonymous men were outsiders in art as they were in life. He was a maverick, who, after he began painting crowds... (http://hyperallergic.com/40449/lester-johnson-last-paintings/) "...an innovative figurative painter who has never quite fit into any of the accepted narratives of postwar American art, and that alone makes his work worthy of a longer look." (http://hyperallergic.com/91323/dark-paintings-done-in-a-dark-time-lester-johnsons-men/) Lester Johnson (Jan. 27, 1919-May 30, 2010); American artist. As a figurative expressionist and member of the Second Generation of the New York School, Johnson remained dedicated to the human figure as means of expression through the many stylistic changes of his oeuvre. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Johnson_(artist)) undefined

More on Google