?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 25,000 - $ 35,000
NORMAN LEWIS (1909 - 1979) Untitled (Vertical Abstraction).
Oil and graphite on linen canvas, circa 1952. 1244x457 mm; 49x18 inches. Signed in oil, lower left.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, New York; thence by descent to the current owner.
This untitled oil painting is a fascinating early work by Norman Lewis which combines his interest in vertical compositions with a direct, abstract expressionist approach. This painting shares the vertical convergence of urban forms found in his other early paintings such as City Night, 1949, and Metropolis, 1952. The drawing is an integral part of the painting--not just an underlying element, but interwoven within the structure of the composition. It also displays the same snowy atmospheric effects of white paint on raw linen found in his later Harlem Turns White, 1955.
