Apr 06, 2017 - Sale 2442

Sale 2442 - Lot 113

Price Realized: $ 18,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002)
Untitled.

Oil on burlap canvas, circa 1970. 610x762 mm; 24x28 inches.

Provenance: the estate of Haywood "Bill" Rivers; thence by descent to a private collection, California.

This untitled canvas is a wonderful and scarce example of Haywood "Bill" Rivers' mid-career abstraction displaying the influence of his childhood quilt-making. For Rivers, the making of quilts eventually became a metaphor for painting, and his style would become increasingly abstract, inspired by the appearance, the construction, and the memory of making quilts. Similar to the work of Rose Piper, River's works were, in the words of art historian Ann Gibson, "about the making of art." Their patterns ultimately became the subjects for these thickly painted abstractions that Rivers developed in the early 1970s.