ALTON PICKENS (1917 1991) The Tour de Force

Sale 2678 - Lot 98

Price Realized: $ 2,500

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500

ALTON PICKENS (1917-1991)
The Tour de Force.

Watercolor and pencil on cream wove paper, 1946. 560x382 mm; 22x15 inches. Signed, titled and dated "1/10/46" in pencil, lower left.

Provenance
K&M Auction, West Palm Beach, Florida, November 30, 2013, lot 463B.
Private collection, Pennsylvania.

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Additional Details

Lucien Alton Pickens was known for his surreal depictions of grotesques and acrobats, as in the present watercolor.

Pickens was born in Seattle and attended the Portland Art Museum School. After one year of school, Pickens decided to move to New York in 1939. He eventually gave up formal education and studied art independently by visiting museums. In 1941, Pickens became an art instructor for the Works Progress Administration program and worked as an illustrator. Perhaps connections he made through the WPA led to his contemporaneous success. By the 1940's, Pickens' works were included in group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art; his work was included in the latter's "Fourteen Americans." Many of Picken's works are cryptic, but clearly convey the artist's love of dynamism and movement.