Pencil on tracing paper, 1953. 307x335 mm; 11 3/4x13 1/4 inches. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, lower edge recto.
Provenance: Gifted by the artist, New York, to Norman Dolph, New York; thence by descent to the current owner.
Decker (1923-1994) was born in Lincoln, Nebraska and studied at the University of Iowa. He was an art instructor at Michigan State University, and worked periodically in Taos, New Mexico. In New York, he was represented by Bertha Schaefer Gallery and the Fischbach Gallery. His Auto-da-Fé series of three large sculptures is based on the theme of the Spanish Inquisition. According to the Detroit Institute of Arts in the 1956-57 Bulletin, Decker "sought to transcribe the trials by fire, both a torture and a purification, to which heretics were subjected by the Inquisition. " Auto-da-Fé II, Decker's welded steel sculpture, won the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum Collection's Purchase Prize and the Dr. and Mrs. Meyer O. Cantor Prize in 1955-56. It was acquired by the Museum from the 1955 Annual Exhibition for Michigan Artists, Detroit. His emerging career was noticed by Art in American, where he was briefly profiled in 1957's "New Talent Annual" alongside Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, and other notables. In 1959-60, Decker was included in the Museum of Modern Art's Recent Sculpture U.S.A travelling exhibition.
