Feb 17, 2009 - Sale 2169

Sale 2169 - Lot 48

Price Realized: $ 7,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
HAROLD COUSINS (1916 - 1992)
Untitled.

Welded steel, with golden brown patina, 1963. Approximately 281x308x102 mm; 12 1/8x15x4 inches. Incised "H Cousins/Paris" and dated lower right, on the base.

This sculpture comes from a body of work the artist made during his residence in Paris in the 1960s. In New York, he had studied under William Zorach, Will Barnet and Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League, where he also met his wife, Peggy Thomas. The couple moved to Paris in October 1949, where he first studied with Ossip Zadkine, and became close friends with Karel Appel. But it wasn't until he befriended the Japanese-American sculptor Shinkichi Tajiri and learned to weld steel with oxygen-acetylene that his work became completely abstract. In the early 1950s, the artist started assembling metal rod formations, which he called "forests," free-standing groupings of linear and flattened forms. This series brought him his first critical success in Paris. Holman-Conwill pp. 62-63.