Oil on burlap canvas, circa 1968. 1067x1334 mm; 42x52 1/2 inches. Signed in oil, lower left recto. Signed in pencil, lower right verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection.
This striking modernist abstraction is typical of Mavis Pusey's distinctive late 1960s canvases. Born in Jamaica, 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 and a Tiffany Foundation grant. 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, all New York.
