John Altoon

John Altoon (b. 1925, Los Angeles, CA; d. 1969, Los Angeles, CA) studied at the Otis Art Institute, the Art Center School, and the Chouinard Art Institute. Following a stint living and working in New York City (1951-1954), and grant-funded travels in Europe, Altoon returned to Los Angeles in 1956. In the late 1950s, Altoon forged his trademark style of surreal abstraction, often in which vaguely identifiable anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images engage in psychosexual scenarios. Once described by Irving Blum, the former owner of Los Angeles’ famed Ferus Gallery, as “dearly loved, defiant, romantic, highly ambitious and slightly mad … incredibly gifted and absolutely brilliant,” Altoon was the consummate maverick among a generation of maverick Los Angeles artists.

During his lifetime, John Altoon exhibited at the Ferus Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) and Quay Gallery (San Francisco, CA). Posthumous museum exhibitions have taken place at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY), the La Jolla Museum of Art (La Jolla, CA), and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (San Diego, CA). In 2015,  Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA) Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Carol Eliel organized a major retrospective of John Altoon’s work. Altoon was also featured in eight venues of The Getty Center’s inaugural Pacific Standard Time initiative (2011-2012).