?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
PHEORIS WEST (1950 - 2021) Seymour Avenue.
Acrylic on cotton canvas, 2000. 965x762 mm; 38x30 inches. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "acrylic on canvas" in acrylic, verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection.
This striking and dynamic composition is an excellent example of the painting of Pheoris West, and only the second work of this significant contemporary artist and educator to come to auction. With its vibrant, transclucent colors, bustling composition and multi-faceted figures, Seymour Avenue typifies West's later career painting. It shows his interests in incorporating movement, Afro-centric symbolism and music in his figurative art.
Born in Albany, New York, West studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, from 1970-74, and then earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University in 1976. That year West joined the faculty at the College of Arts at Ohio State University. He taught as a professor of art there until until he suffered a debilitating stroke in 2016. Over a forty year career, West had solo exhibitions with Peg Alston Arts, New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem and several Ohio university galleries. His paintings today are in many institutional and corporate collections including the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, Howard University, the Ohio State University and the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati. St. James pp. 560-562.
