Born in Seattle, Washington in 1917, Alton Pickens came of age during the Depression and described his youth as nomadic. He spent part of his childhood in Germany and was inspired by its culture and art, particularly the German old master painters. Pickens was educated at Reed College in Portland, Oregon and the Portland Art Museum School. In 1939, he moved to New York and

briefly attended the New School for Social Research before abandoning any type of formal

education. Pickens was largely self-trained as an artist, but cited his visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art as formative for his personal artistic development. Pickens first worked in the mediums of ink and woodcut, but later learned the oil technique through his study of Old Masters and artists such as Francisco de Goya, Honore Daumiere, Pierre Bonnard, and Max Beckmann.



The 1940s were a prolific period for the artist, and he gained wider exposure in the New York art scene through major exhibitions. He first exhibited a woodcut in the Artists for Victory exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1942. In 1943, the surreal and bizarre painting, The Blue Doll, was exhibited in the Romantic Painting in America exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. It

was purchased by the museum for its collection the following year. In 1946, the Museum of Modern

Art included eight of Pickens’ works in the Fourteen Americans exhibition. At the time, Pickens

was represented by Buchholz Gallery in New York, a gallery run by German art dealer Curt Valentin.



Pickens’ work has been described as surreal, yet he refused to state his artistic aims. His surrealistic

style is exemplified in The Blue Doll, in which two grotesque child-like figures mutilate their small

dolls. In Carnival, painted in 1949, Pickens depicts a similarly frightening scene showing a

blue-faced monkey, a woman devouring a bird, a fire-blowing woman at right, and a

man ceremoniously crowning the central monkey. The distinctive imagery in these works are

undoubtedly symbolic, perhaps alluding to the theme of revenge or violence. In 1950, Life featured

Pickens among a group of nineteen notable young American artists, and described Carnival as “a

ghoulish parody on loud-mouthed frauds who pose as defenders of liberty.” Formerly in the

collection of Lincoln Kirstein, the painting was gifted to the Museum of Modern Art in 1951.



The present work, The Send-Off, was painted in 1950 and mirrors the architectural background seen in Carnival. Set underneath a wooden staircase, three figures appear to float in space, yet remain trapped within the confines of the composition. At left, a man in a vibrant yellow suit precariously supports himself atop a bright wooden caned chair, of which a similar design appears in Carnival. The man seems to communicate with the suited figure below, who sits crouched at the base of the stairs. A third figure floats above, with only his bare legs and feet visible. Despite the mysterious scenario and surrealistic effects, Pickens was a masterful painter of realism as seen in the intricate patterning of the pink suit, the attention to light and shadow, and the exacting details of the hands and feet of the figures.



As he continued to paint, Pickens taught art at the Indiana University, and Vassar College until 1982.

Pickens’ works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art

Museum, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.