In the decade following World War II, John Grillo emerged as one of the most chromatically daring voices among the second generation of Abstract Expressionists. Best known for his luminous canvases and exuberant use of color, Grillo also pursued collage as a parallel and equally vital form of experimentation.
Created during the mid-1950s, these collages reveal an artist translating the improvisational language of painting into the physical immediacy of paper. Torn, cut, and layered fragments of color become building blocks of rhythm and tension — an exploration of “push and pull” that echoes his early training with Hans Hofmann. For Grillo, collage was not a secondary pursuit but a distinct arena of invention: a way to reimagine gesture through construction rather than brushwork.
Grillo’s approach aligns him with contemporaries such as Lee Krasner, Conrad Marca-Relli, and Anne Ryan, who each turned to collage as a means of expanding abstraction’s vocabulary. Yet his sensibility remains unique. In his hands, color itself becomes a structural element, vibrating across the surface in complex, layered harmonies.
Seen within a broader lineage that includes Matisse’s late cut-outs and the material investigations of Alberto Burri and Antoni Tàpies, Grillo’s collages stand as testaments to the experimental spirit of the postwar period. They illuminate a moment when American abstraction was defined not by a single medium or style, but by an ongoing search for new ways to see, build, and compose.
In these works, Grillo reminds us that the act of cutting, layering, and assembling can be as radical — and as painterly — as any brushstroke.
