Apr 04, 2019 - Sale 2504

Sale 2504 - Lot 93

Price Realized: $ 20,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
ALVIN D. LOVING, JR. (1935 - 2005)
Message to Demar and Lauri (Study for First National Building Mural).

Watercolor and pencil on Arches, circa 1971. 1029x660 mm; 40 1/2x26 inches. Signed in ink, lower right.

Provenance: private collection, Detroit; thence by descent, private collection, California.

Message to Demar and Lauri, named after Al Loving's children, was one of the first large-scale murals to adorn a building in downtown Detroit, and was described as "the largest painting of its kind in the world" at the time. Loving's mural along with murals by David Rubello (classmate of Al Loving) and John Egner were commissioned by Art for Detroit and funded by Detroit Renaissance to help give a "visual lift" to a city that was facing growing unemployment, poor public transit, high crime and segragated and sub-standard housing in the 1970s. Al Loving's mural was located on the east-facing back wall of the First National building from 1971 into the 1990s. Thereafter, it was sandblasted along with the work Rubello - only one, John Egner's now partially obscured mural on the north face of the Park Shelton in Midtown remains.