Oil on thick linen canvas, 1964. 813x1016 mm; 32x40 inches. Signed, dated and inscribed "Roma" and "To Jackson Gallery 32 E. 69 ST. N.Y 21. N.Y." in oil, upper right verso.
Provenance: Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, with the gallery label on the verso; private collection, Maine.
This significant figure compositon by Emilio Cruz was painted while the artist was on a John Jay Whitney Fellowship in Rome, Italy from 1964-65. His Figure Compositon #7, 1965 is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, gifted from the Martha Jackson Memorial Collection. Cruz exhibited at the Martha Jackson Gallery in 1966.
A New York City native, he began his career associated with New York artists Lester Johnson, Jan Muller and Bob Thompson - artists who all applied the principles of Abstract Expressionism to figurative imagery. Of Cuban descent, Cruz spent the majority of his life in New York City, excluding the 1970s when he taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work is also found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York and the Hirshhorn Museum.
