1949 | Oil on panel

Jack Garver (b. 1921, Larned, Kansas, d. 1987, Albuquerque, NM) was a central figure in a vibrant modern art scene of Albuquerque, New Mexico in the 1940s and ‘50s. He and his wife Alice Garver were closely connected with a network of avant-garde artists, poets, and intellectuals in New Mexico and nationwide. Garver created frenetic, energized images after World War II. He was known for his experimental approach to form as well as technique, using spray paint for both paintings and spraypainted "monotypes" in the early 1950s. Garver earned his BFA from the University of New Mexico in 1949 and his MA from New Mexico Highlands University in 1964. By this time, he was already a fixture in Albuquerque's enclave of artists, including other students and professors at the university, including Raymond Johnson, Richard Diebenkorn, and Adja Yunkers. Garver, like the Albuquerque artists more generally, had largely refused the idealized imagery and nostalgia of other desert modernisms of New Mexico. Garver, like his peers, sought to disrupt dominant modes of painting.