Melville Price (1920-1970)

Melville Price, American 1920-1970 was raised in Washington Heights (upper Manhattan). After studying at The Art Students League and taking classes at The New School in the mid to late 1930s Price was accepted into the WPA work program for artists. Sometime during his studies at The League he came to know modernist master painter Joseph Stella. It was likely Stella that referred Price to the WPA program. Around this time Price's father died and Stella embraced Price as something of family member. In the WPA Price came to know older WPA artists Franz Kline, William de Kooning & William Baziotes. After the WPA work ended Price married & moved to Woodstock NY to find himself as a painter on his own terms. It was during his Woodstock period 1942-1946 that Price emerged as an abstract painter of note and captured the attention of galleries in New York showing the most advance abstract painters. Price had seen first hand the advanced modern & abstract painters working and absorbed their modernist/abstract styles. Working in Woodstock Price also met and came to know Philip Guston, Raoul Hague and a very young Richard Diebenkorn who was working in Woodstock the winter of 1946. By 1948 Price was exhibiting regularly in a number of NYC galleries offering the latest avant garden abstract paintings just as abstract painting began to make a significant cultural mark in The United States. Between 1947-1955 Price exhibited in New York at Charles Egan Gallery, Bodley Gallery, Peridot Gallery, Iolas Galley and Hendler Gallery in Philadelphia. In 1951 he was included in the groundbreaking '9th Street Show' which pushed New York into the center of the new Post War art world. Price accepted a teaching job in 1958 at the University of Alabama and remained teaching there until his death at age 50 in 1970.