?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 50,000
STEVE WHEELER The Halogens II.
Oil on canvas, circa 1943. 507x607 mm; 20x24 inches. Signed in orange oil, lower right recto, and titled and annotated on the artist's label, verso.
Acquired directly from the artist, private collection, New York.
Exhibted Babcock Galleries, New York, with the label on the frame back; "Will Barnet and The Art Students League," Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, The Art Students League of New York, October 5-31, 2010, catalogue no. 23, illustrated page 12.
Published Pamela N. Koob, Will Barnet and The Art Students League,, 2010, catalogue no. 23, page 12 (illustrated).
Wheeler (1912-1992) was part of the "Indian Space Painters" group based in New York in the 1940s. The group, including Will Barnet and Howard Daum, came out of the Art Students League in the wake of World War II. The artists were influenced by European abstract artists, namely Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, as well as by Native American art. The group also worked in dialogue with their contemporaries in the Abstract Expressionist school, which was emerging at the same time (see also lots 95, 96 and 97).
