?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
AVEL DE KNIGHT (1923 - 1995)
Three drawings.
Untitled (Two Young Men), crayon, watercolor and charcoal on wove paper. 13 1/2x12 1/2 inches, 34 1/4x31 3/4 cm * Untitled (Sailor and Swimmer), charcoal and crayon on cream vellum, 13 3/4x11 inches, 35x28 cm. Untitled (Two Men on a Bed), charcoal, crayon and color pastel on vellum. 7 1/4x8 inches, 18 1/2x20 1/4 cm. Circa 1940s.
Raised in New York City by Caribbean parents, Avel de Knight studied art through his teenage years and high school. After enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II, he continued his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and the Académie Julian in Paris with other artists such as Herbert Gentry and Romare Bearden. Once he returned to the United States in the 1960s, he taught at the Art Students League of New York. At this time, de Knight began his best-known Mirage series where he visually recorded his appreciation for the power and wisdom of the collective unconscious through his art. His work is found in numerous museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, National Academy of Design, New York, Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York, the Chrysler Museum of Art in Virginia, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York and the Robert Hull Fleming Museum in Vermont.
Provenance: Julien Outin, Paris; private collection, Virginia. These drawings were acquired from the estate of his close friend, the French artist Julien Outin (1923-2005).
