JOSEPH CORNELL | UNTITLED (BLACK SAND TRAY)

Richard Feigen Gallery, New York

William N. Copley Collection, New York

Christie's, New York, 19 November 1981, Lot 133

Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Pasadena Art Museum, An Exhibition of Works by Joseph Cornell, December 1966 – February 1967, cat. no. 45

New York, Allan Stone Gallery, Joseph Cornell, October - December 2002, cat. no. 9

Joseph Cornell was a self-taught artist, recluse, and master of Assemblage. Influenced by as many subjects as he included in his artworks—American Transcendentalists, European Surrealism, Hollywood, ballet, the French Symbolists—Cornell charged humble materials with intrigue, mystery and unforeseen complexity, combining them in intimate box constructions and collages. From the moment of a storied meeting at Cornell's Utopia Parkway home and studio in 1962, he became a central figure in Allan Stone's collection and gallery program, with many of the artist's most significant works passing through Allan Stone's hands. Cornell has been the subject of countless exhibitions. He was shown alongside his friend, Marcel Duchamp, in the 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada & Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art, honored with a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1967, and an exhibition of his collages at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1971. His work is found in numerous museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Gallery, London, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC.