John Miller

Minimalist painter John M. Miller was known for painstaking geometric abstractions that often include optical illusions yet his meticulous compositions reflect the lineage of abstraction that stems from the mid twentieth-century work of Los Angeles painter John McLaughlin, who influenced many of the artists that are now associated with West Coast Minimalism. Miller began working with this meditative approach to painting in 1973 after abandoning figuration while traveling in Europe, and continued to work in this style until his death in 2016. The repetitive nature of his markings emphasizes the basic properties of painting, or what critics call its “essence.”

Born in 1939 in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, Miller served in the Air Force before enrolling in San Diego State University, from which he received a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1967. He earned a Master of Fine Art degree from Claremont Graduate School in 1972. At San Diego State and Claremont Graduate School Miller studied alongside artists James Hayward and James Turrell, who later emerged as leading figures of West Coast abstraction. Miller held his first solo exhibition at Broxton Gallery, which was founded by Larry Gagosian, in 1976, and quickly became a fixture of the Los Angeles art scene. Miller was the recipient of numerous awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. In addition to his artistic practice, he taught at Minneapolis College of Art and Design from 1981 to 1983 and at UCLA from 1987 to 1991.

Miller’s works are housed in the collections of the Getty, LACMA, SF MoMA, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, among other institutions.