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Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
JACKSON POLLOCK Untitled (Mexican Theme).
Watercolor, crayon and brush and ink on cream wove paper, 1939. 138x312 mm; 5 1/2x12 3/8 inches. Inscribed in pen by the artist's brother, Sanford Pollock, upper left recto.
Pollock (1912-1956) created this work for Wally Strautin, a close friend of his who was his neighbor in Greenwich Village, New York. At the time Pollock was living with his brother, Sanford, who had worked with the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974) and likely inscribed the drawing in Spanish. There is a preliminary sketch for the work on one of Pollock's psychoanalytical drawings (see O'Connor/Thaw 3:520).
Provenance: Gifted by the artist to Wally Strautin (1898-1995), American abstract artist, New York; acquired by Francis V. O'Connor (1937-2017), New York-based art historian, poet, artist and co-editor of the Jackson Pollock catalogue raisonné (published in 1978); gifted by bequest to the current owner.
Exhibited: Galerie Dache, New York, October 1966; "Jackson Pollock: New Found Work", Yale University of Art Gallery, New Haven, October 5-November 26, 1978, National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., December 22,1978-February 11, 1979 and The David and Alfred Smart Gallery, The University of Chicago, Chicago, March 12-May 6, 1979; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, with the long-term loan label verso; Susan Teller Gallery, New York, with the label verso.
Published: Francis V. O'Connor and Eugene Victor Thaw, Jackson Pollock: a Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Drawings, and Other Works, 1978, volume 4, number 945.
