Lee Bontecou (b. 1931)
Property from an Important New York Collection
Lee Bontecou (b. 1931)

Untitled

Details
Lee Bontecou (b. 1931)
Untitled
signed and dated 'Bontecou 1993' (on the underside)
welded steel, porcelain and wire
8 1/4 x 9 3/8 x 7 1/4 in. (21 x 23.8 x 18.4 cm.)
Executed in 1993.
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Literature
C. Chattopadhyay, "Lee Bontecou: The Uncanny Eye," Sculpture, vol. 23, no. 2, March 2004, p. 33 (illustrated).
H. Cotter, "A School's Colorful Patina," The New York Times, 9 September 2005, pp. E27 and E30 (illustrated).
Exhibited
Los Angeles, Hammer Museum; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art and New York, Museum of Modern Art, Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective, October 2003-September 2004, pp. 136 and 231, pl. 137 (illustrated); New York (illustrated on the cover of an accompanying publication).
New York, Garth Clark Gallery, Organic Abstraction Since 1950, November 2004-February 2005.
New York, Knoedler & Company, Lee Bontecou: Selected Works (Gallery Salute to the 130th Anniversary of the Art Students League), October 2005, no. 19.

Brought to you by

Joanna Szymkowiak
Joanna Szymkowiak

Lot Essay

"Following her retirement from teaching in 1991, Bontecou completed work on some of the sculptures she had begun during the previous decade, expanding a vocabulary she had first explored in the late 1970s. A body of these works consists of small sculptures rendered in porcelain, made of interlocking parts that when pieced together evoke miniscule and mysterious landscapes or galaxies – highly delicate and intricately, even obsessively, detailed. She continues to make all aspects of her own work, firing the porcelain she uses as orbs and linkages within her newest sculptures, welding her own metal frameworks, and laboriously building up and embellishing, over a period of months or even years, the armature of her elaborate sculptures" (E. A. T. Smith, Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective, New Haven, CT, 2008, p. 178).

More from Post-War and Contemporary Art Morning Session

View All
View All