The American abstract artist, Larry Poons, is known for his gestural, energetic paintings and expressive use of colour. Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1937, he moved to the United States and first sought to become a professional musician, before studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Art Students League of New York. Poons first gained recognition in the 1960s with his monochromatic Op Art canvases, featuring calculated dots and circles. Over time, he has explored many techniques and overall styles, and has been linked to both Abstract Expressionism and Lyrical Abstraction. In the 1970s, Poons began to produce his dramatic and well-known “Throw” paintings, where paint is thrown and poured onto the canvas. Throughout his career, Poons has been exhibited alongside some of the most renowned post-war and contemporary artists of all time, including Josef Albers and Ellsworth Kelly in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1965 exbition “The Responsive Eye,” and Hans Hoffman, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “New York Painting and Sculpture, 1940-1970,” in which he was the youngest artist to be included. Poons is internationally admired and collected.