?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
MERTON D. SIMPSON (1928 - 2013) Singer.
Oil on Mali hunting cloth and canvas, 1991. 508x406 mm; 20x16 inches. Initialed in oil lower right, recto. Signed, titled and dated in ink, verso.
Provenance: acquired from Bill Hodges Gallery, NY, private collection, NY.
Exhibited: Ancestral Improvisation, Galerie Noir d'Ivoire, Paris, March 27 - April 11, 1992, then traveled to: Tambaran Gallery, New York, September 18 - October 15, 1993; Merton D. Simpson: The Journey of an Artist, Gibbes Museum of Art, South Carolina, September 8 - November 12, 1995, with gallery label on the frame back.
Illustrated: Merton D. Simpson: Ancestral Improvisation, essay by Allan Stone, Galerie Noir d'Ivoire, Paris, p. 5; Merton D. Simpson: The Journey of an Artist, Gibbes Museum of Art, listed in exhibition checklist.
Singer, along with thirty other works in the Ancestral Improvisation series, are Simpson's search for "self-knowledge" and "psychological portraits." Inspired by jazz, a primordial ancestry and Cubism, Simpons' use of cloth and oil to create abstract portraits allowed him to explore memory in a subtle and modern manner. Stone p. 2.
