Oli Sihvonen, born in Brooklyn, attended Black Mountain College from 1946 to 1948. Sihvonen’s geometric-optical abstractions reflect what he had learned from his mentor Joseph Albers. “Abstraction is the essential function of the human spirit” Joseph Albers declared in his teachings at Black Mountain. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Sihvonen stayed focused and true to these teachings. His entire body of work remained clean, objective and flat, with no gestural or emotional contrivances.
