The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of December 19, 2025
Farm Yard
1948
(American, 1885–1965)
Unframed: 80.3 x 121 cm (31 5/8 x 47 5/8 in.)
© The Milton Avery Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Location: Not on view
Did You Know?
Explaining why he was so quiet, Milton Avery said, "Why talk when you can paint?"Description
Milton Avery’s passion for bold color and elemental shapes infuses Farm Yard. Throughout his career, the artist sought inspiration from everyday life, which he carefully distilled into abstracted compositions that would capture, as he described, “the purity and essence of the idea expressed in its simplest form.” This painting likely reflects Avery's fondness for folk art; indeed, the fowl with their simplified silhouettes resemble early American weather vanes.- 2020Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art2020-The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
- Brown, Heather Lemonedes, ed. The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, exh. cat.(Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022).Kramer, Hilton, Milton Avery: Paintings 1930-1960. (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1962). Mentioned P. 29; Reproduced Plate 65.Hobbs, Robert. "Milton Avery." In The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, edited by Heather Lemonedes Brown, 162-165. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 162-165; Mentioned: p. 254Brown, Heather Lemonedes. “Color, Sensation, and Memory: Themes in the Keithleys’ gift and promised gift.” Cleveland Art 62, no. 3, 2022 Mentioned: PP. 5, 6; Reproduced P. 6.
- Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).
- {{cite web|title=Farm Yard|url=false|author=Milton Avery|year=1948|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2020.170