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Forrest Bess (1911-1977) was a painter and fisherman in Bay City, Texas, known for his generally small, abstract, biomorphic paintings, and his ideas on the merging of masculine and feminine energy.
Although Bess lived much of his life in relative isolation, he was represented by Betty Parsons in New York, and his work received renewed interest after a 1981 solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Although most of his paintings are in private collections, his work can be found in museums including the Menil Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and others.
