DOUG OHLSON

Doug Ohlson photographed by Arthur Mones, 1982.
In the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.

“Because Ohlson appeared in the New York art world during the early 1960s, it is tempting to say that he crosses the deep seriousness of the Rothko generation with that era’s flashy exuberance. It was a time of hot pinks and sensuous magentas, not only in Pop Art but also in Op, Minimalism, and the hard-edged abstraction of such painters as Frank Stella and Nicholas Krushenick. Ohlson quickly made a mark by finding his own uses for the livelier options of the ’60s. Yet he had a larger ambition, and as the years went by the nature of that ambition became increasingly clear.”
— Carter Ratcliff, 2013

1936

Doug Ohlson is born November 18 in Cherokee, Iowa to Lloyd and Effie Johnson-Ohlson. He is the sixth of six children, two brothers and three sisters.

Throughout his youth, Ohlson worked on the family farm raising milk-cows, hogs, chickens, which were fed by the farm’s crops consisting of several hundred acres of hay, corn and soy-beans. During the school year, he was up before sunrise to feed the animals and milk the cows. After school he cleaned the pens and stalls, pitched hay, working until sun-down. The growing season was marked by long days of field work, planting, bailing hay, plowing and harvesting. When he finished the day’s work on the family farm, there were three adjacent Ohlson farms where he labored when needed.

Photo by Maria Arpino
Doug Seated at Bond Street