The June Edit

Online Selling Exhibition: 1–30 June

Morris Louis, Alpha Beta
In the summer of 1960, Morris Louis embarked on a series he described as his most ambitious, a striking claim within an oeuvre that continually defined and redefined the vanguard of Color Field painting. Louis’s assessment of the so-called Unfurled paintings is made unequivocal in Alpha Beta. Across the sprawling canvas, Louis championed a new, meticulous materiality where his inimitable control over his staining technique is on full display. Alpha Beta is further distinguished by its exceptional provenance, having resided for nearly five decades in the renowned collection of architect I. M. Pei and his wife Eileen. Of the 85 Unfurled paintings completed in 1960, 48 are held in major museum or public collections, making the presentation of Alpha Beta for sale a rare collecting opportunity.
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Sam Gilliam, Annie
Sam Gilliam’s Annie exemplifies a chromatic brilliance thrust into the third dimension, drawing on the improvisatory ethos of jazz as it does on formal inspiration that traces back to Renaissance painting. It's title an homage to Gilliam’s late wife, Annie, this piece belongs to a celebrated series of works on washi paper which hold significant symbolic and emotional resonance for the artist. Annie exemplifies Gilliam’s idiosyncratic manipulation of materiality and his ability to engage the surface itself as a medium. The delicacy of the paper and vibrancy of its colors reflect the ambitious gestural dominion of the Color Field painters and their artistic progression into the 21st century. Often referred to as a “Third Generation” Color Field artist, Gilliam remained at the helm of the Washington School of Color alongside peers Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Alma Thomas.
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Robert Indiana, LOVE (Blue Faces Red Sides)
Robert Indiana’s LOVE (Blue Faces Red Sides) stands as a quintessential example of among the artist's most celebrated motifs and of his brilliant transformation of the textual into the sculptural. The famed compositional arrangement of the letters L.O.V.E. was conceived by Indiana for a Christmas card commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in 1965. The hard-edge surface and the chromatic choices pay tribute to the principles of Ellsworth Kelly, Indiana’s mentor and lover, while the masterful separation of the semantic from the graphic aligns Indiana with giants of Pop art. Executed in his signature red and blue, on an intimate yet commanding scale, LOVE (Blue Faces Red Sides) is one of only 6 editions in this size and colorway.
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