Born November 11, 1946, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Whitney's early passion for art took him from Columbus College of Art and Design to earning a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1968, followed by an MFA from Yale School of Art in 1972.
Shortly after completing his studies, Whitney relocated to New York City in 1968, immersing himself in its vibrant cultural scene. He developed a mentorship with artist Philip Guston while teaching at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, where he eventually became Professor Emeritus of Painting and Drawing.
Whitney's journey toward abstraction emerged gradually. His early work often featured portraits and landscapes, but by the 1980s he started experimenting with abstract compositions and oil painting, including gestural forms and colored fields. It was, however, his time living and teaching in Rome during the 1990s-and travels to Egypt-that marked a pivotal shift. Here, he discovered how "space is in the color," a concept that crystallized his later grid-based practice.From the early 2000s onward, Whitney embraced a distinctive visual language-a loose grid made of horizontally aligned color blocks separated by painterly lines. These works are renowned for their subtle tonal shifts, visible brushstrokes, and rich materiality. Whitney has compared his method to the "call-and-response" phrasing of African-American music-each color calling forth the next in an improvisational flow. His aesthetic references are wide-ranging, drawing on jazz, Roman architecture, American quilt making, Minimalism, and artists like Giorgio Morandi, Cézanne, Titian, and Velázquez.
Despite decades of working in relative obscurity, Whitney's dedication began to earn broader critical acclaim in later years. His first solo museum exhibition in New York, Dance the Orange, debuted at the Studio Museum in Harlem when he was 68 years old.
His reputation gained momentum through major exhibitions and retrospectives:
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How High the Moon, a career-spanning survey, premiered at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and traveled to the Walker Art Center; it is currently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, through September 1, 2025.
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The Italian Paintings, featured in Venice during the 2022 Biennale as an official collateral event, showcased decades of his practice through an Italian lens.