HALE WOODRUFF (1900 - 1980) Untitled (Green Landscape).
Oil on canvas, circa 1969-70. 762x889 mm; 30x35 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. Signed in oil, upper right verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection.
With a partial oil sketch on the verso, related to his Celestial Gate series.
This oil is a fine, transitional work of Hale Woodruff's--a painting that marks the beginning of his late career series of abstracted landscapes, begun after his retirement from New York University in 1967. The artist combined his interest in the abstract forms of African symbols from his Celestial Gate series with more organic forms and an earthier palette in the late 1960s. There are two other known works in this series: Blue Landscape, 1970, in the collecton of Kenkeleba Gallery, New York, and the unfinished Red Landscape, circa 1970, in the collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Amaki/Brownlee pp. 186 and 190.
