Apr 02, 2015 - Sale 2378

Sale 2378 - Lot 128

Price Realized: $ 35,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 35,000 - $ 50,000
ALVIN D. LOVING, JR. (1935 - 2005)
Untitled.

Mixed media on collage of cardboard, paper and wood, mounted on masonite board, circa 1976-79. Approximately 1300x1880 mm; 51x74 inches.

Provenance: the estate of Ray Blanco, New Jersey. Cuban-born Ray Blanco (1955- 2006) was a television documentary director and producer, and a prominent Latino activist and politician. He was also the President of the city council in the city of Plainfield, New Jersey, and worked with U.S. Senator Robert Menendez.

This colorful and complex collage is an excellent example of the large mixed media works constructed by Al Loving in the mid- to late 1970s. It shows the continued evolution of his work away from his hard edge abstraction of the early 1970s, from the sculptural, dyed canvas constructions to more densely layered and fragmented works. This impressive work incorporates torn paper collage with constructed and painted forms of cardboard with wood fragments. Loving included collages in his two solo exhibitions at Fischbach Gallery in 1974 and 1976, and his first retrospective at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1977. Another 1976 collage, Shelly, Fran, Susie and Andrea, is in the collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem, and was recently included in the museum's exhibition, Brothers and Sisters. From 1976–1978, Al Loving taught art as an assistant professor at William Patterson College in Wayne, New Jersey.