William Ivey

William Ivey began studying art in 1941 at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle but was soon drafted into the United States Army. He was discharged in 1946 after being wounded in combat in Italy and enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts (today the San Francisco Art Institute). He returned to Seattle in 1948. Ivey had one-person exhibitions at the Seattle Art Museum in 1964 and 1975 and at the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, in 1989. He received a Ford Foundation Purchase Award in 1960, a National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities Grant in 1962, and a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1967. Ivey is considered one of the Northwest’s most accomplished Abstract Expressionist painters. At the California School of Fine Arts he developed a highly personal style grounded in the works of his professors, Clyfford Still (1904-1980), Mark Rothko (1903-1970), and Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967).