?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
SAM MIDDLETON (1927 - 2015) Untitled.
Mixed media on textured brown wove paper, 1959. 457x610 mm; 18x24 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Netherlands; private collection, New Orleans.
This dynamic composition is an early example of Sam Middleton's abstract painting at the beginning of his European period. After his 1944 wartime service with the Merchant Marines, Middleton moved to Greenwich Village in New York. A part of the Village scene in the early 1950s, according to his obituary in The New York Times, he was a regular at the Cedar Tavern and friends of Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. Middleton then moved in 1955 to Mexico, following the path of Elizabeth Catlett, and adopted his signature technique of paint, gouache and collage.
By 1959, Middleton left the United States permanently, moving to Spain, Sweden, and then Denmark. While living in Copenhagen, Middleton joined many other American expat artists including Clifford Jackson, Walter Williams and Herbert Gentry. In 1962, he settled in Holland where he lived in Amsterdam for the remainder of his career.
