Tom Boutis (1922-2018)

A New York–based artist whose seven-decade career explored the expressive power of color through painting, monotypes, and sculpture. Often described as an “artist’s artist,” Boutis worked intuitively with hue and structure, creating abstract compositions that balance intimacy and formal rigor. Rooted in the postwar New York art scene and shaped by the East 10th Street artist-run galleries he helped establish, his work reflects a lifelong engagement with abstraction, rhythm, and harmony. Influenced by landscape, architecture, and jazz—many works titled after the jazz standards of his youth—Boutis’ art is poetic and deeply attentive to the emotional life of color.