Picture of the Week: Indigo by John Egner
February 5, 2022
John Egner was a Detroit artist and educator. He was born in Philadelphia in 1940. In 1966, Egner moved to Detroit after receiving his MFA from Yale. He taught at Wayne State University for 21 years and was one of Detroit’s influential Cass Corridor artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Egner was a leader within the growing art, poetry and music scene that emerged out of Detroit’s 1960s Civil Rights movements. In addition to Detroit, he felt a deep connection with New York. As a teenager, he spent time at Art Students’ League of New York, and he frequently visited the city after he moved to Detroit. In 1978, Egner was one of 10 “Young American Artists” in the Exxon National Exhibition at the Guggenheim. He eventually decided to leave Detroit and move to New York, but he maintained his connections with both cities. His relationships with Detroit gallerist Susanne Hilberry and collector James Duffy helped pave the way to Egner building connections in New York. Whether in Detroit, New York, or any city in between, his talent and passion for the arts impacted everyone who had the pleasure of knowing him.
Egner was known for his geometric paintings, drawings, and wooden sculptures. His Indigo painting demonstrates his diligent use of geometric shapes and abstract, expressive brushstrokes. Egner composed this work in 1980, when he and his wife Linda would have been living in SoHo. Measuring at 80 x 134 inches, Indigo pulls the viewer into a colorful realm filled with endless twists and turns, refusing to let the eye rest. The large scale and lively colors may show an early connection with the Neo-Expressionist movement, which emerged in the 1980s. There are green and orange swirls of paint near the center that lay on top of layers upon layers of horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and curved lines. Egner also contrasts between thin and thick brushstrokes throughout the work. Additionally, he includes several splatter-like brushstrokes, diversifying the paint texture. These different shapes, sizes, and textures culminate to become what appears to be an abstract rendering of the inner workings of a machine; While Egner would have been in New York at the time, this machine-like appearance may appeal to the industrial motif that was often part of the Cass Corridor aesthetic. The painting does not appear to have any prominent portions painted in indigo, however Egner highlights the colors that one would mix to create indigo: red and blue. The upper right corner has a largely blue section, perhaps to communicate that there should be more blue than red when mixing paint to make indigo. Through Indigo, Egner seems to have conceptualized what the in-between moments of mixing red and blue paint to create indigo would look like. The components swirl together and build off each other in an energetic fashion, like the complex parts of a machine in a factory.
Written by Angela Athnasios
Source: "John D. Egner, 1940-2021." Hall and Peet Funeral Home.