?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 40,000
ALVIN D. LOVING, JR. (1935 - 2005) Untitled (Cube).
Acrylic on hexagon-shaped canvas, circa 1969. 1956x1702 mm; 77x67 inches.
Provenance: the artist; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection.
This large, colorful painting is a very strong example of Loving's important painting from the late 1960s--shaped canvases of Minimalist geometric shapes. Inspired by Hans Hofmann and Josef Albers, Detroit-born Loving earned an MFA from the University of Michigan in 1965. Loving began hard edge painting of cubes and hexagons in 1967. Loving launched his New York career after his first solo exhibition with Gertrude Kasle Gallery in Detroit in 1969. Gertrude Kasle provided Loving with letters of introduction to Harold Hart of Martha Jackson Gallery and Steven Wilde and Bert Walker, curators at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In 1969, Loving enjoyed extraordinary success with a critically acclaimed solo exhibition at the Whitney. Loving was the first of a group of African-American artists whose work was shown at the Whitney during the 1970s, including Frank Bowling, Frederick Eversley, Melvin Edwards and Alma Thomas--all, except Edwards, were abstract painters. The Whitney exhibition led to the museum purchase of the painting Rational Irrationalism, private sales of all the other works, and his signing with William Zierler Gallery.
