?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
JOSEPH SOLMAN Still Life.
Oil on board. 403505 mm; 15 7/8x19 7/8 inches. Initaled in oil, lower margin.
The Whitney Museum of American Art, which opened its doors to the public in 1931, became New York City's premier venue for showcasing contemporary art in the 1930s. The institution featured and favored only Realist and figurative painting of the time, eschewing abstract art; this compeled a group of artists to organize their own 1938 exhibition The Ten: (Whitney Dissenters), at the Mercury Galleries just down the street from the Whitney. "The Ten," as they called themselves, were led by Mark Rothko (at the time still known as Mark Rothkowitz) and Joseph Solman, whose artistic ideologies were more in line with modernism and Expressionistic styles.
Although Solman (1909-2008) did not believe entirely in abstraction, stating that "I have long discovered for myself, that what we call the subject yields more pattern, more poetry, more drama, greater abstract design and tension than any shapes we may invent,' he did come to embrace its application of shapes and colors that comprised many of his energetic paintings throughout his long artistic career.
