Oct 05, 2017 - Sale 2456

Sale 2456 - Lot 72

Price Realized: $ 20,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
HAYWOOD "BILL" RIVERS (1922 - 2002)
Untitled.

Oil on cotton canvas, circa 1968-69. 978x1346 mm; 38 1/2x53 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.

Provenance: the artist, New York (1969); private collection, New York; private collection, Ohio.

This dramatic canvas is the largest painting by the artist to come to auction, and a significant transitional work. In this untitled canvas, Haywood "Bill" Rivers' completely deconstructs the formalism found in his 1960s abstract paintings. The geometric patterns and grid composition of the quilts that inspired his abstract works are broken up with expressive and painterly passages of color. The geometric patterns eventually become the subjects for the more thickly painted, hard edge abstractions that Rivers returned to in the early 1970s.