Valton Tyler: Recent Paintings

The singular work of this Texas born (1944), self-taught artist has been described as visionary... "visionary seems the right word for describing his vivid, unusual and technically refined paintings, prints and drawings whose style defies convenient labels. Abstract, surreal cartoonish, sci-fi fantastic, metaphysical apocalyptic Baroque—all of these fit but also fall short of fully describing his art." says Edward M. Gomez of the New York Times.

"The vocabulary of form we see in his work was clearly invented by Valton Tyler. Yet for those of us familiar with Surrealist paintings of the '20s, '30s and even '40s in Europe, there appear startling analogs not only to early Dali, De Chirico and Max Ernst but also, and most importantly, to Yves Tanguy, whose work is replete with mysterious yet beautifully articulated landscapes. There is a similar sensibility operative here and, more than anything else, as James Thrall Soby wrote in a 1955 catalogue of Tanguy's one person show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, his 'life work is integral to an extraordinary degree, its discipline a strengthening rather than a constrictive force.'