CHARLES ALSTON (1907 - 1977) Santa Ana Winds, Ariz. (Arizona).
Goauche and watercolor on wove paper, 1944. 305x457 mm; 12x18 inches. Signed, dated and titled in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: Bill Hodges Gallery, New York (then A.F.T.U. Gallery), with the label on the frame back, private collection, New York
This dramatic watercolor of a storm over an Arizona valley shows Charles Alston's modernist approach. Alston and his friend Hale Woodruff made similar landscape studies and sketches of the West during a later exploratory trip to California in 1948. Both artists were preparing for the pair of large historical murals they would complete the following year for the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in Los Angeles.
