Lester Johnson

Johnson was a member of the Second Generation of the New York School during the late 1950s. The subject of much of his work is the human figure. His style is considered by critics and art historians to be in the figurative expressionist mode. ^[1][2]

Lester Johnson was born in 1919 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. From 1942 to 1947, he attended the Minneapolis School of Art, where he studied under Alexander Masley, a former student of Hans Hofmann in Munich, Germany.^[3]

Johnson moved to New York City in 1947. His first studio and apartment was on 6th Street and Avenue A, next door to the painter Wolf Kahn. His next residence and workspace was a loft on St. Marks Place that he shared with Larry Rivers. In 1949, Johnson married Josephine Valenti, an art historian, and moved into a house on 2nd Ave and 2nd Street, which the couple shared with Kahn. ^[3] In 1961, Johnson briefly left the city for an artist-in-residence position at Ohio State University. Upon returning to New York City, Johnson shared a studio with the painter Philip Pearlstein. In 1964, Johnson was invited by Abstract Expressionist painter Jack Tworkov to teach at Yale,^[4] where he served as the Director of Studies Graduate Painting from 1969 to 1974. Johnson retired from teaching at the Yale School of Art and Architecture in 1989. ^[5]