?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 60,000 - $ 90,000
NORMAN LEWIS (1909 - 1979) Untitled.
Oil and ink on wove paper, 1960. 584x1016 mm; 23x40 inches. Signed and dated "1-60" in ink, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, New York; thence by descent to the current owner, Florida.
This elegant and expressive composition is a superb example of Norman Lewis' work on paper at mid-career. It shows the evolving calligraphy of Lewis' ritual figures or "little figures" within his larger and more colorful compositions at the beginning of 1960. His figures are now more abstract, simplified with patterns of parallel lines that reinforce an overall sense of movement within the space, and in concert with the atmospheric colors. This new approach is seen in other notable works of paper like Countless Upward, 1959, private collection, and Some to See, Some to Guess, 1959, collection of the Brooklyn Museum.
The paper width is the largest format that the artist used for works on paper. The sheet also has the printed Inkweed Arts illustrations on the verso - found on many Lewis works on paper from the late 1950s and 1960s.
