John Altoon

John Altoon (b. 1925, Los Angeles, CA; d. 1969, Los Angeles, CA) was a seminal presence in the Los Angeles art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. 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.

Altoon 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. 

During his lifetime, Altoon exhibited at the Ferus Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Nicholas Wilder, (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); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA); Centre Pompidou (Paris, France); Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, (La Jolla, CA); Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (CA); and Baxter Art Gallery (Pasadena, CA), among others. In 2015, Los Angeles County Museum of Art held a major retrospective of the artist’s work. Altoon was also featured in eight venues of The Getty Center’s inaugural Pacific Standard Time initiative (2011-2012).

Altoon’s work is held in numerous institutional collections including: Tate Britain (London, UK); Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY); Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA); Museum of Contemporary Art, (Los Angeles, CA); Art Institute of Chicago (IL); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA); and Norton Simon Museum (Pasadena, CA); among others.