Mixed media and paper collage on wove paper, 1959. 254x330 mm; 10x13 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: the artist; Feingarten Galleries, New York (1960); acquired at auction, Christie's, New York (circa 1984), private collection.
Exhibited: Feingarten Galleries, New York, April, 1960.
Charles Alston painted abstract modernist compositions--oil, collage and works on paper--through the late 1950s. In 1960, Alston received the Emily Lowe Memorial award and exhibited in April at Feingarten Gallery, New York. Alston was also one of the founding members of the Spiral Group in the summer of 1963 with Romare Bearden and Hale Woodruff. Like his friend Norman Lewis, Alston painted primarily with black in a series of works through the late 1950s and early 1960s--he considered these black and white abstractions shown together in his 1968 retrospective to be amongst the most important works he had done. Bearden/Henderson p. 269; Kenkeleba p. 22.
