?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 50,000
JOHN SALT Riviera 2.
Oil on canvas, 1969. 1360x1750 mm; 53 1/2x69 inches. Signed, titled and dated in ink, on the stretcher verso.
Ex-collection OK Harris Gallery, New York, with the label and the inventory number "OK #3" on the stretcher verso; acquired directly from OK Harris Gallery by private collection, New York, 1969; thence by descent to the current owner.
Salt (born 1937) is a pioneer of the Photorealist school. Born in Birmingham, England, he studied art at the Birmingham School of Art from 1952-58 and the Slade School of Art in London from 1958-60. He moved to the United States in 1966 to teach at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, where he worked under Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) who influenced his early Abstract Expressionist paintings.
During his time in Baltimore, he discovered the work of photographers Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) and Lee Friedlander (born 1934). He admired their documentary style and adapted some of their photographs to paintings in a photorealist manner eliminating any trace of Expressionist sensibilities.
He began taking his own photographs and his work from that point onward focused on automobiles, often wrecked or decrepit in rural settings. To create his paintings, Salt draws an outline onto the canvas using a photograph projected from a slide. Color is added using an airbrush, with stencils used to get a precise effect. This eliminates the hand of the artist and removes any trace of self-expression. He continues to paint American scenes despite returning to England in 1978.
