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Property of a Distinguished New York Collector Classic Post-War treasures from a Distinguished New York Collector Richard Pousette-Dart, Jean Paul Riopelle, David Smith, Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Tobey, Norman Bluhm, Jack Tworkov and Conrad Marca-Relli; this is just a short-list outlining classic Post-War art works from a Distinguished New York Collector offered herein. The works assembled here create a patchwork of individual narratives illustrating the story of the New York School from its automatist beginnings to its eventual twists and turns through a second and third generation of practitioners. This prescient collector assembled the present grouping of exceptional New York School pictures far in advance of the current collecting trend and his inclusion of works by artists just now receiving their due respect is testament to his connoisseurship and passion for the entirety of the New York school; several prime examples from the collection are discussed below. Mood Indigo, is a prime example of Adolph Gottlieb's Pictograph works - it effectively weaves together mythological symbolism and menace. This is a work that must be seen both in the context of the war years and as a personal reaction to the violence and chaos infecting the lives of all. Early works by Gottlieb and his younger contemporary Richard Pousette-Dart are both heavily laden with a symbolism derived from sources as culturally diverse as American Indian Art, Byzantine Mosaics, Oceanic and African Art. Similarly, both artists speak of their work in terms of universal human experience and "inner vibration". To say that these artists were also engaged in spiritual practice would not be far from the truth; Pousette-Dart states, "My definition of religion amounts to art and my definition of art amounts to religion. I don't believe you can have one significantly without the other. Art and religion are the inseparable structure and the living adventure of the creative." (Richard Pousette-Dart, exh. cat., Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2007, p. 20). This attitude was pervasive in the 1940s and 1950s as artists were looking to express their innermost selves in a direct and unfiltered approach, weeding out the peripheral to produce a pure and wholly autonomous work of art. Untitled, 1952 is an early masterpiece by Canada's undisputed champion of action painting Jean-Paul Riopelle. A North American artist living in Paris, Riopelle was working in the company of like-minded Americans, namely Mark Tobey and Sam Francis who were working in a similarly rigorous artistic vein. For these artists process reigned supreme. However unlike Tobey's intimately scaled works on paper, Riopelle's paintings were the end result of an all-encompassing physical engagement utilizing the artist's entire body; this performance is described rather emphatically by the French poet Jacques Dupin "Riopelleworks in a series of crises, outbursts, in a sort of fury and hypnotic explosion that leaves no room for pauses, corrections or second thoughtsColour comes bursting out of the tube, hurls itself onto the pliable knife and then takes possession of the entire canvas, obeying only the laws of organic growth and the conventions of some violent celebration." (Jacques Dupin as quoted in Jean-Paul Riopelle, exh. cat., Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1991, p. 28). It is essentially during this time between 1951 and 1952 that Riopelle first arrived at his own uniquely provocative pictorial resolutions, a flatbed of color swatches swarming to the edges of the canvas and held in check with tenuous strands of enamel spun like a spiders web cast out to engage passionately with it's underlying surface. Another highlight from the collection is St. Cyprian's Day, one of a handful of early canvases that represent the artist Conrad Marca-Relli's mature style and flaunts a new-found confidence in his signature process of painted and collaged canvas. Though the artist had been working in collage and with abstraction previously, it took Marca-Relli many years to leave his cursory notations of figuration behind to allow the materials of his work to speak for themselves, albeit in a sublimated allegorical manner. H.H. Arnason suggests that St. Cyprian's Day is in fact a summary of Marca-relli's experiments in movement created through the tension between painted surface and collage, and continues to describe the work at hand. "In St. Cyprian's Day, 1957-1958, small, active color shapes are scattered over a vast white field, as the knights of England and France ranged over the vast plain of Agincourt. The painting is a wonderful recapitulation of a battle that is likely a stately dance in a tempo that slowly accelerates as the armies, with bright battle flags flying, surge forward towards each other." (H.H. Arnason, Marca-Relli, New York, 1963, n.p.)

Mark Tobey (1890-1976)

Untitled

细节

Mark Tobey (1890-1976)
Untitled
signed and dated 'tobey 59' (lower left)
tempera on paper
6 x 2½ in. (15.2 x 6.3 cm.)
Painted in 1959.

来源

Royal S. Marks, New York
Estate of Sonja de Zorrilla, New York
Her sale; Christie's, New York, 12 May 2004, lot 120
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

注意事项

On occasion, Christie's has a direct financial interest in the outcome of the sale of certain lots consigned for sale. This will usually be where it has guaranteed to the Seller that whatever the outcome of the auction, the Seller will receive a minimum sale price for the work. This is known as a minimum price guarantee. This is such a lot.