Lot 16
  • 16

Armando Morales (b. 1927)

Estimate
150,000 - 200,000 USD
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Description

  • Armando Morales
  • Desnudo contra un zócalo azul
  • signed and dated 83 lower right
  • oil on canvas
  • 38 by 51 1/4 in.
  • 96.5 by 130.2 cm

Provenance

Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris
Sale: Sotheby's New York, Latin American Art, May 14, 1996, lot 48, illustrated in color

Exhibited

Mexico City, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Rufino Tamayo; Monterrey, Museo de Monterrey, Armando Morales / Pintura, April-September 1990, no. 16, p. 46, illustrated in color p. 99 (no. 17, p. 3, illustrated in a second catalogue)

Condition

This canvas is still stretched on its original stretcher. The canvas is well stretched and the paint layer is stable. The picture should be hung as is. There is one small scuff to the varnish in the upper left and a group of cracks in the lower left which are only slightly noticeable and which are stable. Morales' complex paint layer and technique sometimes do give rise to instability yet in this case it is not apparent. This condition report has been provided courtesy of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Throughout Armando Morales' iconography, female nudes are found as primary objective in different attitudes and positions, as recurring obsessive images. Desnudos contra un Zócalo Azul (1983) depicts a group of figures in a nocturnal setting. The female nudes, standing against an enigmatic construction, share this dream-like space with a bicycle. Morales' blue and violet palette joins the color of the flesh with a superb coloristic control.  With a rigorous balance, he integrates a vast storage of images that he has reinvented in different ways. An inexhaustible supplier of visions and fantasies, he leads us, step by step, to unusual interpretations of beings, evocations of memories, intimate sensations, charged with nostalgia. With his already characteristic personal language, and a vocabulary invented by innovative sophisticated silhouettes, he unveils metaphysic spaces where inanimate objects seem to dialogue with human figures that sustain the marble-like purity of these women. The architectural fragments are important elements within the composition context, fantastic landscapes that include vast and grandiloquent forms. Armando Morales does not follow conventional styles, trends or schools; he adheres to the desire of his original impulse thanks to his extraordinary knowledge of the female body, an obsessive muse marked by an unrestrained creation.

His figures are an exaltation of the human beauty and its harmony with the architectonic places.  He achieves spaces of a great expression: he adapts the constructions supported by surroundings of marked gravity and complexity that harmonize with female figures and bicycles.  Within a frame of natural beauty, he incorporates sober volumes that enrich this architectonic space. In it, he achieves a mysterious atmosphere in a setting of strange buildings.  In Desnudos contra un Zócalo Azul, Morales paints with quick and tiny cross-hatched strokes that provide each color with a vaporous shade: in the clouds, in the female bodies and in its architectonic counterpart.  The technique used in this and on many other occasions  is to scrape some parts of the various layers of color previously applied to show an effect of surface vibration and to achieve a harmonic and luminous chromatic oscillation.

Dr. Lily Kassner, Mexico 2010