?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
NATHANIEL (SONNY) BUSTION (1942 - ) Untitled.
Oil on two joined pieces of cotton canvas, 1972. 1727x1372 mm; 68x54 inches. Signed and dated in spray paint and signed again in red ink, verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, California.
This expressive and experimental painting is the largest and most significant artwork of Nathaniel Bustion to come to auction. The same year Bustion's work was included in the important exhibition Los Angeles 1972: A Panorama of Black Artists at LACMA. He was also included in Samella Lewis and Ruth Waddy's 1972 survey Black Artists on Art, Volume 2. Bustion is known for his diverse work in painting, sculpture and ceramics, often using mixed media in clay, concrete, wood, and copper, and printmaking.
Born in Gadsden, Alabama, he attended Colorado State University, Belgium Antwerp Academy of Art and the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. An active presence in the Los Angeles area, Bustion had a solo exhibition of his paintings, ceramics and drawings in 1971 at the Brockman Gallery, a two person 1975 exhibition at Loyola Marymount University with Stanley C. Wilson and a 1976 four person exhibition at the University of Southern California with Alonzo Davis, Betye Saar and Stanley C. Wilson. He taught at the Otis Institute, Los Angeles City College, and Pomona College. More recently, Bustion was included in the important 2008 exhibition at Jack Tilton Gallery L.A. Object and David Hammons Body Prints, and the subsequent catalogue, published in 2011. Lewis/Waddy p. 114 and 135; Tilton/Charwood pp. 312-15, 403, 408 and 409.
