?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
MARION WALTON (1899-1996)
African-American Head. Lignum vitae on marble base. 335 mm; 13 1/2 inches (height excluding base). Signed in ink, bottom. Circa 1935.
Provenance: Bernhardt Crystal, New York, 1950; private collection, New York.
Exhibited "Tree Trunk to Head: Chaim Gross and Direct Carving in America," The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, New York, October 10, 2013 - February 28, 2014.
Walton studied at Bryn Mawr College and at the Art Students League. After World War I, she attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris. Upon her return to New York, Walton rejected her formal training and began to carve directly into wood, a physically demanding and expressive task. One of her experimental trademarks was leaving the inherent roughness and incised lines in the wood. Her first solo exhibition was with Weyhe Gallery in New York in 1933, the same year she exhibited her sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art's "American Sources of Modern Art" show. She was awarded commissions from the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, one being a set of three limestone wall reliefs in the Pittston, Pennsylvania post office. In 1939, she was chosen to create a large outdoor sculpture for the New York World's Fair.
