?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
MERTON SIMPSON (1928 - 2013) Confrontation #23A.
Oil on cotton canvas, 1969. 1016x762 mm; 40x30 inches. Signed, titled and dated in ink, verso.
Provenance: Merton Simpson Gallery, New York, with the artist's gallery label on the verso; the estate of the artist; private collection, New York; acquired at Swann Galleries, private collection (2017).
Merton Simpson's abstract painting became more political with his involvement in the Spiral Group in 1964. Influenced by their political discussions in response to the Civil Rights movement, and the violence in both street protests and the Harlem Riot of 1964, Simpson began painting his Confrontation series. Other works from this series are in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, the Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, SC (on loan to the Detroit Institute of Art) and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution.
