?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 25,000 - $ 35,000
NORMAN LEWIS (1909 - 1979) Untitled (Figurative Abstraction).
Mixed media, including oil, gouache, ink and crayon, on masonite board, 1946. 450x375 mm; 14x10 inches. Signed and dated "7-2-46" in ink, lower right.
Provenance: Kenkelaba Gallery, New York; private collection, Texas.
This modernist artwork is a scarce example of some of Norman Lewis' early experimentation with abstraction. In the summer of 1946, Lewis worked on a small scale - his first group exhibition at the Willard Gallery was in December. The artist continued to deconstruct the figurative elements of his postwar painting while developing an abstract vocabulary. A pair of 1946 works on board were exhibited in the recent retrospective Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis -Roller Coaster made just a month later on August 3, on a similar gessoed masonite board, and another untitled work, in the collection of Raymond J. McGuire, with a denser and darker composition. Fine pp. 56-57.
