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Arts

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FRAME BY FRAME

Avery made color carry secret meanings, too

By Sebastian Smee

 |  Globe Staff  

  March 13, 2012

Milton Avery was one of America’s finest mid-century artists, and his color harmonies were endlessly surprising. Avery could be painting a landscape, a nude, or - as in the marvelous painting “Husband and Wife’’ at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford - a couple at rest in a living room. But in every case, you feel a kind of spiritual shiver, a lack of completion, something short of the full-throatedness of a true hedonist.

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