March Avery, born 1932, is the daughter of famous and influential American painter Milton Avery and American artist Sally Michel Avery. Inspired by their example, Avery grew up painting with her family and developed a distinct style, one that uses abstract forms and brilliant color to depict the scenes of everyday life.

Avery avoided the influences, like world events and abstract expressionism embraced by many artists in the 1930s and 1940s. Instead, she always adhered to her father's methods: reducing elements to their essential forms, eliminating many details, and instead developed flattened picture planes, connecting shapes, simplifying forms and using strong colors. Even today, Avery is most influenced by her father, who died at age 85 in 1965. Without much parental supervision, perhaps she gravitated to his style by osmosis.

Avery grew up in New York around her parents’ artist friends, such as Mark Rothko, Adolf Gottlieb, Barnett Newman and Marsden Hartley. She spent her summers in the country, which has had a clear influence on her work.

The artist never took a single studio or art history class. Instead, Avery hoped she might discover the definition of "truth and beauty" by studying philosophy at Barnard College. Youthful idealism didn't stop the headstrong artist from returning to her roots. "I knew no one but artists, so I knew that is all I would ever be," she says.

Avery married Philip Cavanaugh in 1952 and graduated from Barnard College in 1954 with a degree in philosophy. Avery’s son, Sean Cavanaugh, also a painter, publish a monograph about his mother in 2024.

Avery, who is based in New York, has been exhibited at museums and galleries around the country, including The Chrysler Museum, Vanderbilt University, Bryn Mawr College, the Brooklyn Museum, the Newark Museum, the New Britain Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

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