Clyfford Still 1904 - 1980

Glenn and Jessie Whiffen, Pullman, Washington, 1941 (gift from the artist)
Gift to the present owner from the above, 1951

This work is in very good condition. The canvas is unlined. There is a possible small scrape in the upper right sky. Under UV: there is no apparent inpainting.
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Clyfford Still was among the pioneers of the Abstract Expressionist movement that emerged in the United States following World War II and utilized abstraction to convey intense emotion. Executed in 1937, Untitled (Grand Coulee Dam, Washington) is a rare example of the artist’s early work painted before his style shifted from representational to abstract. Using a range of blue hues punctuated by flashes of bright color, Still renders a scene from the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in north central Washington, an area not far from his childhood home in Spokane and Washington State College in Pullman, where he attended graduate school and was teaching at the time. Still was particularly interested in and concerned by the effects of the dam on the region’s native population, and scenes from the nearby Colville Indian Reservation appear in many of his early compositions. In 1937, he co-founded the Nespelem Art Colony, which was active until 1941 and sought to depict the landscape and people of the Colville Reservation.

As indicated by an inscription on the reverse of the painting, Still gave Untitled (Grand Coulee Dam, Washington) to his friends Glenn and Jessie Whiffen in 1941. Like Still, Glenn Whiffen was a professor at Washington State College. Ten years later, the Whiffens gave the painting to a close friend who had been a student of Still’s and recently returned to teach as WSC. In a letter written in 2009, the owner reflected on his experience with Still as a professor, “I was quite young but I recall that he was easy to talk to and was keenly interested in students. Mr. Still’s class in Art History showed that he had a good knowledge of the subject, and he often would delve into the details of a particular painting or piece of art. I never saw him paint, but I saw his artistic ability evidenced in the charcoal and crayon drawings he did in class. His works, then more realistic and semi-abstract, were captivating and certainly a far cry away from his later works.”