?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
EARL HOOKS (1927 - 2005) Untitled.
Thrown and hand-built glazed stoneware, 1957. Approximately 431x203x216 mm; 17x8x8 1/2 inches. Signed and dated in pencil on the underside.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
This large, modernist vessel featuring wonderful biomorphic shapes epitomizes Earl Hooks's mid-career work in ceramics. It displays his commitment to exploring the relationships between design, balance, and form. Hooks rose to prominence due to his application of naturally occurring shapes to functional sculptures. His works take on bulbous shapes with intentional ceramic inclusions and a matte glaze that scatters reflected light in dispersed directions.
Hooks was one of the most significant Black ceramic artists of the 20th Century and the founder of Studio A, one of the country's first Black-owned and operated fine arts galleries in Gary, Indiana. Born August 2, 1927, in Baltimore, Hooks received a BA degree from Howard University in 1949, attended Catholic University in Washington, DC, from 1949-51, and then received graduate certificates from both the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1954 and the School of American Craftsman in New York in ceramics in 1955. He served as both professor and chair of the art department at Fisk University from 1961-67.
