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Estimate: $ 100,000 - $ 150,000
ED CLARK (1926 - 2019) Spatial Image III.
Dry pigment on wove paper, 1982. 1346x1651 mm; 53x65 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right. Typed label on the frame back supplying the title.
Provenance: acquired from G. R. N'Namdi Gallery, Detroit; private collection, Michigan.
Exhibited: Ed Clark: Recent Work, Randall Galleries, Ltd., New York, May 12 - June 5, 1982.
Illustrated: June Kelly, Ed Clark: Recent Work, Randall Galleries, Ltd., New York, front cover.
Ed Clark's pigment on paper artworks lies between intention and accident. Spatial Image III is an excellent example of his works on paper, and a significant work in his development of the dry pigment technique, inspired by Pueblo sand paintings of the American Southwest. After working in Taos, New Mexico, Clark created a new group of large-scale painting in acrylic and works on paper composed of brown, blue, red, and orange pigment during a three month stay in Paris. He reinterpreted the oval forms that preoccupied him in the 1960s, as glowing clouds of atmospheric color.
In June Kelly's Randall Galleries catalogue essay, Clark describes this experimental approach: "With my hands forcing the colors, it is no longer the classic pastel technique. It is more akin to the sand painting of the Navajo and Pueblo Indians. The possibility of changing the image is immediate and the opportunity for spontaneity is greatly enhanced. For me it has been a personal breakthrough in the abstract experience."
Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1946 to 1951, and in 1952 at the Academy de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where he lived until 1958. George Sugarman then persuaded him to return to New York to help found the Brata Gallery with Ronald Bladen, Al Held and others. Clark exhibited there until 1966, when he returned to France for three more years. He has acknowledged the influence of the paintings of Nicolas de Stael and the music of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, and later the gestural abstractions of Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages. He exhibited internationally and his paintings are in numerous institutional collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, Detroit Institute of the Arts, Museum of Modern Art, Pérez Art Museum, Saint Louis Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
