?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,000
LUCILLE CORCOS. Weekend Chores. A highly-detailed image of a suburban neighborhood bustling with activity. Egg tempera on masonite. 540x667 mm; 21 1/4x26 1/4 inches. Signed "Corcos" in lower right image; undated. Lower right corner chipped, scattered abrasions with small losses, thick wood boards affixed to left and right edges bearing printer's registration marks.
Corcos (1908-1973) was known as a "modern primitivist" of American art. After studying with under Jan Matulka, she illustrated many books for both adults and children, and her paintings graced the covers of American magazines and journals including Vanity Fair, American Weekly, Fortune, and This Week Magazine. Her work was exhibited widely by the 1930s and appeared in numerous Whitney Biennials as well as exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the British Museum among other prestigious institutions. Her best-known illustrations show highly detailed composite urban and suburban scenes as viewed from the outside, often from a high angle, such as in this lot. The observer generally views these scenes "only from the outside and in passing; Corcos turns them inside-out before the eye of the viewer. The work is literally 'revealing.' As such, it is touching, witty, and thoroughly delightful to contemplate. Though Corcos paid little heed to conventions of scale and perspective, her work is far from abstract, and her renderings are painterly and nuanced"--Marc Michael Epstein, Lucille Corcos 1908-1973, Jewish Women's Archive.
