Larry Poons (b. 1937) is an American abstract painter. His gestural abstraction takes inspiration from the rhythm and improvisational methods of musical composition. His canvases feature thick, looping impasto and disorienting explosions of color. They recall the stylings of fellow Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, with whom Poons exhibited in the landmark Metropolitan Museum of Art survey “New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940–1970.”
Poons was born in Tokyo and studied from 1955 to 1957 at the New England Conservatory of Music, with the intent of becoming a professional musician. After seeing Barnett Newman's exhibition at French and Company in 1959, he gave up musical compositionand enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He also studied at the Art Students League of New York. Poons taught at The Art Students League from 1966 to 1970 and currently teaches at the League (since 1997). Over the course of his career, the artist has thrown and poured paint onto his canvases, built up their surfaces with unconventional materials, and used a paintbrush to apply color. His work belongs in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among many others.