Oil on board, circa 1925-30. 386x447 mm; 15x17 3/4 inches. Signed in oil, lower left recto, and inscribed "no. 20" in watercolor verso. With the "Douane Centrale" ink stamp verso.
Provenance: Private collection, Chicago.
Born in Zurich, Glarner (1899-1972) spent his childhood around Europe, including time in Switzerland, France and Italy. Glarner's artistic talent was recognized at a young age and he began his formal training at the Regio Instituto di Belli Arti in Naples from 1914 to 1920. During these years, Glarner was cloistered from the avant-garde movements prevalent in Europe. It was not until 1923 on a trip to Paris that the young artist first became immersed in abstract art. While studying at the Académie Colarossi, Paris during the early 1920s, Glarner met artists at the avant-garde forefront—Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Hans Art, Fernand Léger and Piet Mondrian. Subsequently, Glarner approached his canvases with a limited palette and simplified composition, and it would not be until the 1930s that his style would become totally abstract, informed by Mondrian's Neoplasticism.
Glarner moved to the United States briefly from 1930-31, showing in New York and most notably in Katherine Dreier's landmark 1931 An International Exhibition Illustrating the Most Recent Development in Abstract Art at Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo. He returned to Paris and then to Zurich until the break out of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, which spurred him to settle in New York permanently.
