Watercolor on paper. 645x510 mm; 25 1/2x20 1/8 inches. Signed in pencil, lower right.
Ex-collection private collection, New Jersey.
Lechay (1907-2001), having little formal art instruction, is generally considered a self-taught artist. He worked for the Easel Project, part of the WPA during the Great Depression; his early works are imbued with the Social Realist style of this era. Though he was in the same circle as Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), and appreciated their pure abstraction, Lechay never completely strayed from representational art. Nevertheless some works in his œuvre like the current watercolor explore the psychology of tonality with a nod toward Rothko's abstraction.
