Oct 03, 2013 - Sale 2323

Sale 2323 - Lot 79

Price Realized: $ 33,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
MAVIS PUSEY (1928 - )
Nuvae.

Oil on burlap canvas, circa 1968. 762x1016 mm; 30x40 inches. Signed in oil, lower left recto. Signed, titled and inscribed "oil" and "30x40" inches in pencil, upper left verso.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection.

Nuvae shows the sophistication of Mavis Pusey's late 1960s abstractions with its subtle palette and modernist composition. 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--included in her application was this painting--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.