$32,500
Estimate: $6,000 - $10,000
18 Works from the Bachman Collection
Auction: June 4, 2018 1:00:00 PM EDT
Signed, inscribed with title and dated 12/79 verso, oil on canvas.
64 x 88 in. (162.6 x 223.5cm)
Provenance: M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, New York.
Christie's, New York, "Contemporary Art," February 8, 1986, lot 144.
The Estate of Lee & Gilbert Bachman, Atlanta, Georgia & Boca Raton, Florida (acquired directly from the above sale).
EXHIBITED:
"Nancy Graves," M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, March, 1980 (illustrated in the exhibition brochure).
A prolific artist who garnered prominence in the late 1960s, Nancy Graves' oeuvre includes sculpture, paintings, drawings, prints, and watercolors, as well as set design and film. Educated at Vassar College and Yale, she studied with other famous artists including Brice Marden, Chuck Close, Robert Mangold and Richard Serra, to whom she was married from 1964 until 1970. In 1969 she became the youngest artist and the fifth woman to ever be chosen for a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art. Following that show, her work was shown at countless galleries and museums, both nationally and internationally.
Graves began her career primarily with Post Minimalist sculpture, using atypical materials such as latex, plaster, steel, wood, fur and burlap to create sculptures of fossils, bones, totems, and camels. Her show at the Whitney Museum featured life-like sculpted camels made from painted and patched fur. Reminiscent of taxidermy, the works invoked the connection of science and art, and the exhibition helped to establish her distinct place in the art world.
The 1970s saw Graves veer away from sculpture and back towards painting. Her work at this time incorporated an amalgamation of imagery taken from lunar maps, nature photography, and NASA satellite recordings, blending the abstract nature of art with the precision of science. This painting is a particularly important one from Graves' body of work as it refers to a 16mm film she made in 1970 that recorded the migration of camels in Morocco. The repetition of pattern seen here reflects her interest in the photographic motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge, and the juxtaposition of color and form make this piece a visually and intellectually arresting one.