George Mueller
American Painter
1929-2021
“George Mueller is a remarkable artist who early in his career (late ‘50) came to the attention of the critical community in New York. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1957, won notice at the Venice Biennial, and given a Brandeis University Creative Arts Award, among other distinctions. His work is in the collections of renowned museums including the Guggenheim, Whitney, and State Museum in Trenton, NJ. Josef Albers considered him one of America’s great colorists.”
Mary Ellen Abell ~ Historian
Hotel Coney Island - 1975 - SOLD
6’ x 6’
The Beach - 1972
About the Artist:
6’ x 6’
The Package - 1965
Mueller was born of German immigrant parents in Newark, NJ in 1929 and studied art and architecture before leaving Cooper Union in his early twenties to join contemporaries: Robert Motherwell, Carmen Cicero, Franz Kline, and his mentor: John Ferren. As a young artist his work was feature in shows, represented by Borgenicht Gallery and collected by the Whitney, Guggenheim, and Chicago Museums. He was written up in The New York Times, Esquire, and New Yorker Magazines. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship and acclaim at the Brussels Biennale before he was 25 years old.
Multi Universe - 1970
6’ x 6’
6’ x 6’
By the 1960’s his work had changed: identified as Abstract Geometric or “Hard Edged Painting.” It was during this time that he also developed “Microtonal Color” a unique process that he created and used at times in combination with the large geometric shapes he ultimately became known for.
His abstract paintings represent interiors, landscapes, and dream spaces. They stem from one man’s experience. He was a painter who spent nearly all day, every day, reading literature and philosphy, listening to music, watching the world, sorting through sensations, and then: transferring some of that onto canvas. So few contemporary artists spend as much time and effort in the pursuit of aesthetics as Mueller did.
His significant craftsmanship was integral to his work. It reflected the refinement and clarity with which he saw the world and of what he referred to as his “handprint” on each canvas.
The Office - 1970
6’ x 6’
Review of Mueller’s one-man show
“George Mueller’s work constitutes a serious and very impressive emulsion of representation, geometric Hard Edge and ‘color-painting’ with symbolic overtones. Immaculate architectures emerge from hundreds of stripes and rectangles, in flat, vibrant colors, rigidly symmetrical on either side of a central axis that is thrust forward or back by violent perspective. Not a trace of the Herculean craftsmanship remains, lending the works a sort of apparitional grandeur, like H.G. Wells plus LSD. The triumphant idiosyncrasy of the artist’s image, in relief against his obvious stylistic sophistication, is a little breathtaking.” (Reviews and Previews)
by Peter Schjeldahl of Art News - 1966
Principal One-Man Exhibitions
1952 Artists Gallery, New York
1955 Borgenicht Gallery, New York
1960 Borgenicht Gallery, New York
1963 Fairleigh-Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey
1964 Waddell Gallery, New York
1967 Waddell Gallery, New York
1972 Straley Gallery, Livingston, New Jersey
1991 Caldwell College, “40 Drawings, 30 Years”, New Jersey
2000 Sussex County College, New Jersey (Drawings)
2019 Sussex County College, New Jersey (Paintings)
2024 Gallery at the Hackensack Performing Arts Center, NJ
Solid Gold - 1974
6’ x 6’
Cheerful But Violent - 1977
T for Texas - 1972
Principal Group Exhibitions 1950’s
1955 The Guggenheim Museum ~ “Younger American Painters”
1955 University of Illinois Biennial
1957 Whitney Museum of American Art ~ “American Painters under 35"
1957 Dallas Museum of Fine Art ~ “Young Collectors”
1957 The Carnegie International
1958 Worcester Art Museum ~ “Some Younger Names”
1958 Venice Biennial ~ “American Painters Paint the City
1958 New York Art Foundation, Rome
1959 Whitney Museum of American Art
1959 Detroit Institute of Arts
1959 Brussels World’s Fair
Untitled - 1973 6’ x 6’
Western Danger - 2007 2’ x 2’
Untitled - 1969 6’ x 6’
Principal Group Exhibitions 1960’s
1960 Philadelphia Academy of Art
1961 Whitney Museum Annual
1961 Brandeis University Exhibition
1963 Whitney Museum Annual
1963 American Federation of Arts
1963 Brandeis University Exhibition
1964 Art Institute of Chicago ~ “67th Annual American Exhibition”
1964 The New York World’s Fair
1965 Whitney Museum Annual
1965 Whitney Museum of American Art ~ “A Decade of American Drawings”
1966 Larry Aldrich Museum ~“Brandeis University Creative Arts Awards
1967 University of Illinois Biennial
Human Interior with Storm Front-2012-SOLD 38” x 48”
New York Times Review
Whether a show is good or bad is one point. Whether it is interesting or not is another. They don’t always correlate exactly. George Mueller is unusual in that he applies aggressive color not to pure abstraction but to a subject from real life—nothing more nor less than a porch, with verandas, windows, railings, trees—a motif he uses over and over again immaculately, like someone distilling and re-distilling an essence. Then having defined the scene (in black and white) he starts playing on it with color like a musician, a comparison he invites with titles like ‘Four Random Variations in 15 tones’ and ‘Anton Webern, Op5, No 3’.
The latter presumably refers to the third movement of Webern’s Five Pieces for String Quartet, and Mr. Mueller’s pictorial coding of it looks like a hip Mondrian. He then superimposes this schema over his theme, the old front porch, so that it looks like what “Home on the Range” in 12-tone would sound like (which is very exciting).
In his purification of the porch, an old Saturday Evening Post cover cliché, and his turning of this commonplace motif to uncommon purposes, Mr. Mueller is unique. His show is one of the most exciting in town.
Brian O’Doherty - 1967
Later Years ~ Group Exhibitions
1994 Paintings-New Jersey Center for Visual Arts
2000 Drawings-New Jersey Center for Visual Arts
Calculating Density 4’ x 4’
High Humidity - 2000 - SOLD 5’ x 4’
6’ x 6’
6’ x 6’
The Whitney Museum
The Guggenheim Museum
The Dallas Museum of Fine Art
The Newark Museum
The Art Institute of Chicago
The James Michner Foundation
(Allentown Art Museum)
The State Museum, Trenton, NJ
Revlon Corporation
The American Republican Insurance Company
George Mueller’s work can be found in the principal collections of:
Books About the Artist
1956 Kuh, Katherine American Artists Paint the City
1961 Goodrich, Lloyd American Art of Our Century
1961 Art Institute of Chicago Paintings - Art Institute of Chicago
1965 Whitney Museum A Decade of American Drawings
1967 Allentown Art Museum Sources for Tomorrow
1968 Robbins, Daniel An American Collection
1974 Baur, John The Whitney Museum of American Art
1981 Newark Museum American Art in the Newark Museum
1989 Falk, Peter Hastings
Annual Exhibition Record of the PA Academy of Fine Arts
2001 Davenport, Ray Davenport’s Art Reference
2003 Dunbier, Lonnie Pierson T
he Artists Bluebook: 32,000 North American Artists
Thoughts Driven by Over by Following Cars-2015 - SOLD
Faculty Positions
New Jersey Center for Visual Arts
Arts Center of Northern New Jersey
Bloomfield College
Fairleigh-Dickinson University
University of Rhode Island
Oklahoma University
Sussex County College, N.J.
Breakfast at Alamagordo - SOLD 42” x 48”
Looking to Purchase or loan artwork by George Mueller ?
Contact:
Dr. Julie McWilliams
juliemcwilliams61@gmail.com
Text or call: (973)-862-1564
Fireman’s Funeral - 2002- SOLD 6’ x 6’