American, 1909 - 1999
Maxwell Desser began as a commercial artist, graphic designer, and inventive producer of crawl filmstrips, and later dedicated himself purely to fine art. He roved artistic movements from realism to abstraction and settled on the almost-abstract. He painted in series — Harbor Patterns, Montauk, Music — and in smaller clusters on chess, cityscapes, and football. Whatever the theme, it embodied his singular style.
Desser’s almost-abstracts contain recognizable objects — boats, rigging, cities, musical instruments — yet are not necessarily oriented by gravity: his painting “Music Series, Seriatim #54” was inadvertently published upside down in a textbook; “Bewitched” was painted vertically, but signed and hung horizontally. His pure abstracts relate even less to up, down, and sideways: several were signed on adjacent edges and framed with two hanging wires perpendicular to each other, giving the possessor a role in the art.
Please visit https://maxdesser.com/ to view his paintings and learn more about Maxwell Desser.
Desser’s almost-abstracts contain recognizable objects — boats, rigging, cities, musical instruments — yet are not necessarily oriented by gravity: his painting “Music Series, Seriatim #54” was inadvertently published upside down in a textbook; “Bewitched” was painted vertically, but signed and hung horizontally. His pure abstracts relate even less to up, down, and sideways: several were signed on adjacent edges and framed with two hanging wires perpendicular to each other, giving the possessor a role in the art.
Please visit https://maxdesser.com/ to view his paintings and learn more about Maxwell Desser.
