John Millei: A Synthesis of Figuration and Abstraction
In California’s sweeping landscapes, there is more than sunshine and surf culture—there is also a fertile ground for avant-garde art. Within this vibrant artistic environment, John Millei’s work unfolds as a significant contribution to a tradition of experimentation and creative innovation.
Connections to key figures such as Picasso, Jasper Johns, and Willem de Kooning are clearly palpable in Millei’s practice. Like Picasso, Millei moves fluently between figuration and abstraction, deconstructing and reconfiguring forms in order to develop a visual language of his own. In doing so, he breaks with conventional ideas of perspective and form to generate a deeper emotional and intellectual resonance. Yet his work is never mere imitation. Rather, it is a synthesis of diverse influences—filtered through his own artistic sensibility and lived experience. His Californian background plays an essential role in this process, exposing him to a wide spectrum of cultural currents that shape and enrich his painting.
Within the dynamic atmosphere of California’s art scene, Millei has found a creative freedom that allows him to pursue his vision without constraint. Inspired by the region’s natural grandeur and the cultural diversity of its communities, he creates paintings of striking beauty and depth. Millei’s canvases operate in a productive tension: figures and objects remain recognizable, even as their forms dissolve into abstract compositions. His work invites viewers to move between identifying tangible motifs and exploring non-representational elements—creating a charged interplay between reality and imagination.
Millei’s importance to contemporary art lies not only in his technical command, but in his ability to question and expand the traditional boundaries of painting. His works serve as a powerful reminder that art is not confined to rigid categories; it is an ongoing dialogue between form and feeling, between concreteness and abstraction. Like Picasso, Millei tests the limits of painting—continually pushing them further. His work stands as a vivid testament to the vitality of California’s contemporary art scene and beyond, and his distinctive synthesis of figuration and abstraction opens new horizons for painting in the 21st century.
“There are so few artists for whom scale is so benevolent. Most painters, since Monet’s Water Lilies, have had an itch to go big. Few can really nail it like Millei can. He confesses that he likes to ‘sneak up’ on his paintings. By this he means he likes to casually distract himself from them, then dart his attention back again in an effort to resee them—to instantaneously find their strengths and weaknesses as a first-timer might apprehend them.”
— Alex Weinstein
John Millei | A Master of Contemporary Painting
John Millei (b. 1958, Los Angeles) is an Associate Professor within the arts faculties of Pasadena, Claremont Graduate University, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He is considered one of the key figures of Californian abstraction that emerged in the 1980s, and has taken part in numerous museum exhibitions alongside leading artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, and Ernst Wilhelm Nay. His works are held in major international collections, including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), LACMA (Los Angeles), and the Museo Jumex (Mexico City). Millei began his career in the late 1970s as an assistant to Richard Diebenkorn. He was influenced by Jasper Johns’ iconic 0 through 9 series (1960) as well as the abstract-expressionist paintings of John Altoon—an important figure in Los Angeles’ art scene during the 1950s and 1960s.
John Millei belongs to a generation of artists—including Lari Pittman, Roger Herman, and later Mary Weatherford, Mark Bradford, and Laura Owens—who helped shift painting in Los Angeles away from the minimalism of the Light and Space movement and toward a more painterly, open approach, operating in the tension between figuration and representation, pop culture, and Abstract Expressionism.
In the 1990s, Millei began exhibiting with the influential Ace Gallery in Los Angeles. Founded in Vancouver and established in Los Angeles in 1967, Ace Gallery became a pivotal institution, presenting artists such as Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Donald Judd, Frank Stella, and Robert Motherwell.
