Ground Breaking: Works from the Collection of Joseph & Blanche Blank
Melvin Edwards
KASSINGA
Lot Closed
December 18, 05:36 PM GMT
Estimate
30,000 - 40,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Ground Breaking: Works from the Collection of Joseph & Blanche Blank
Melvin Edwards
b. 1937
KASSINGA
welded with artist's signature, title and date 81
welded steel
9½ by 10 by 8 in. (24.1 by 25.4 by 20.3 cm.)
Private Collection
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, Traditions and Transformations: Contemporary Afro-American Sculpture, February – May 1989
Brenson, Michael, “Going Beyond Slickness: Sculptors Back to Basics”, The New York Times, 3 March 1989 (illustrated in black and white)
"Though it’s [the sculpture] laid down flat, you can turn it this way or that way and look at it in a comprehensive, three-dimensional way. And you don’t have to decide what’s the front or back in the beginning. Though I think fairly early on, most times, I decide that pretty early. But later on, I found I could start out one way, and it looked very definitely like ‘this is the front, that’s the top,’ and then I’d reverse it or change the angles. And then you’ve got a totally different set of sculptural dynamics. So, reconfiguring, tilting, reversing, and coming back tomorrow and thinking about it in a totally different way was a part of things. Especially because I was improvising always. You know, I didn’t have drawings to go by, didn’t want drawings to go by. I only wanted to go by what the work was giving me itself."
(Melvin Edwards, Quoted in Nasher Sculpture Center’s Conversations with Melvin Edwards)