Kenneth Showell (1939–1997) was an American abstract painter who moved to New York in 1965 and set up a studio in SoHo. He showed in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1967 and 1969 Annuals and in the 1971 “Lyrical Abstraction” exhibition. He became known for spray paintings made on bunched-up canvas which, once flattened, looked illusionistically wrinkled; their soft, luminous colour fields placed him within Lyrical Abstraction.
Kenneth Showell (1939–1997) was an American abstract painter. Born in Huron, South Dakota, he grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and earned a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Indiana University. In 1965 he moved to New York and set up a studio in SoHo. Showell became known for spray paintings made by applying paint with a spray gun to bunched-up sections of canvas, so that the flattened picture appeared, as if by trompe l’œil, to be wrinkled. His soft, luminous colour fields placed him within Lyrical Abstraction, and he took part in the 1971 “Lyrical Abstraction” exhibition. He was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1967 and 1969 Annual exhibitions, and the Whitney holds his untitled painting of 1969. Later he turned towards landscape and still life, also experimenting with video and computer-generated imagery. Showell was also much sought after as a photographer of artworks for galleries and fellow artists. His work reappeared in the survey exhibition “High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967–1975” (2006). The colour lithograph “Aldan” (1970), numbered 97/125 and offered by TUMO Gallery, dates from the height of his lyrical abstract period.
