?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
MAVIS PUSEY (1928 - ) Recarte.
Oil on canvas, circa 1968. 1626x1168 mm; 64x46 inches. Titled in paint on the verso.
Provenance: the artist; private collection.
Recarte is an excellent example of the urban abstraction of an overlooked artist, and the first painting of Mavis Pusey to come to auction. Born in Jamaica, 1928, Pusey immigrated to New York at the age of 18 to study at the Art Students League. Pusey also worked at Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop and with the painter Will Barnet. She was the recipient of the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation award, with her application of Recarte and two other paintings, and a Tiffany Foundation grant. Pusey's paintings reflect an abstract New York--"My work consists of geometrical forms in a variety of geometrical configurations. These forms are based on buildings around the Manhattan area. I am inspired by the energy and the beat of the construction and demolition of these buildings--the tempo and movement mold into a synthesis and, for me, become another aesthetic of abstraction." Pusey's paintings and prints were included in major exhibitions, including the 1966 UCLA Art Galleries The Negro in American Art and the 1971 Whitney Museum of American Art's Contemporary Black Artists in America. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Public Library.
