City Abstraction

Details

ABRAHAM WALKOWITZ (1878-1965)
City Abstraction
signed with initials 'A.W.' (lower center)
watercolor and pencil on paper
19 x 12 1/4 in. (48.3 x 31.1 cm.)
Executed in 1912.

Provenance

The artist.
Private collection, New York, acquired from the above.
Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York.
Private collection, New Hampshire, acquired from the above.
Owings-Dewey Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Private collection, New Mexico and Texas, acquired from the above.
Owings-Dewey Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2008.

Conditions of sale

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Tylee Abbott Vice President, Head of American Art

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Lot Essay

Born in Russia, Abraham Walkowitz met Alfred Stieglitz in 1912 and exhibited in his first show at Stieglitz's gallery 291 that December. As epitomized by the present work executed during that seminal year, "Walkowitz's view of the city is a modernist's. He sees in it the opening for abstraction, in the grid of buildings, flat patterning of façades, and distortions of continuous space. At the same time, he conveys the intense energy of the metropolis as though the city itself were personified." (G.S. Bernstein, The Teresa Jackson Weill Collection of Art, Waltham, Massachusetts, 1980, p. 50)

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