CLAUDE LAWRENCE (1944 - ) Untitled (Abstract Figuration).
Acrylic on heavy wove paper, 2001. 571x762 mm; 22 1/2x30 inches. Signed and dated "4-01" in acrylic, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New York.
Exhibited: Vered Gallery, East Hampton, NY, with the label on the frame back.
Chicago painter and printmaker Claude Lawrence is largely a self-taught artist who began his career as a jazz musician. His boldly colored artwork shifts between figuration and abstraction with a direct, gestural style. Lawrence moved to Harlem where began his artistic career in 1987. In New York, he befriended artists Fred Brown, Lorenzo Pace, Jack Whitten, Joe Overstreet and Bob Blackburn whom he later joined to study printmaking at the Printmakers Workshop from 1992 - 1993. He exhibited in galleries in Sags Harbor and Riverhead, New York in the 1990s, and had a solo exhibiton at the Montclair University, Montclair, NJ in 1997. He has experienced a recent revival with a solo exhibition at Gerald Peters Galllery in 2015. In addition, his artworks have been accepted into several museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery, the Parrish Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
