Dale Chihuly - Design New York Friday, June 15, 2012 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist
    Judy Freeman Gallery, New York, 1971

  • Exhibited

    ‘Chihuly & Herman, GLASS: HANDLE WITH CARE’, Judy Freeman Gallery, New York, June 4-July 1, 1971

  • Literature

    Dido Smith, Craft Horizons, October 1971, p. 52 for a review of the exhibition
    Dale Chihuly and Linda Norden, Chihuly: Glass, Seattle, 1982, p. 70 for an early neon installation

  • Catalogue Essay

    The present lot is one of nine early neon sculptures hand blown by Dale Chihuly and exhibited during the summer of 1971 at Judy Freeman Gallery, New York. Reviewing the exhibition in Craft Horizons, Dido Smith wrote: “Dale Chihuly’s glass is all fluent form and pulsing lines of light—bulbous monochrome transparencies searching space with tenuous antennae that twist and coil in neon ecstasy,” a review as purple and exuberant as the works on view.

    In 1967, while both were students at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Ms. Freeman enlisted Chihuly’s help producing glass architectural models. After moving to New York to practice architecture, Ms. Freeman opened a gallery, where she exhibited works “created in craft modalities”.

    "Dripping molten glass out of the furnace and blowing organic forms and putting them in environments, lighting them in special ways. It was one of the most creative times of my life." (Dale Chihuly on his neon installations)

  • Artist Biography

    Dale Chihuly

    American • 1941

    Dale Chihuly was introduced to glass while studying interior design at the University of Washington.
    After graduating in 1965, Chihuly enrolled in the first glass program in the country, at the University
    of Wisconsin. He continued his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he later
    established the glass program and taught for more than a decade. I n 1968, after receiving a
    Fulbright Fellowship, he went to work at the Venini glass factory in Venice. There he observed the
    team approach to blowing glass, which is critical to the way he works today. In 1971, Chihuly
    cofounded Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State. With this international glass center, Chihuly
    has led the avant-garde in the development of glass as a fine art. His work is included in more than
    200 museum collections worldwide. He has been the recipient of many awards, including two
    fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and thirteen honorary doctorates.


    Chihuly has created more than a dozen well-known series of works, among them Cylinders and
    Baskets in the 1970s; Seaforms, Macchia, Persians, and Venetians in the 1980s; Niijima Floats and
    Chandeliers in the 1990s; and Fiori, Glass on Glass, and Rotolo in the 2000s. He is also celebrated
    for large architectural installations. In 1986, he was honored with a solo exhibition, Dale Chihuly:
    Objets de Verre, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Palais du Louvre, in Paris. In 1995, he began
    Chihuly Over Venice, for which he created sculptures at glass factories in Finland, Ireland, and
    Mexico, then installed them over the canals and piazzas of Venice. In 1999, Chihuly started an
    ambitious exhibition, Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem; more than 1 million visitors attended the
    Tower of David Museum to view his installations. In 2001, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
    curated the exhibition Chihuly at the V&A.


    His lifelong fascination for glass houses has grown into a series of exhibitions within botanical
    settings. The Garden Cycle began in 2001 at the Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago, and
    continued at several locations, among them the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, in 2005
    and 2019; the New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, in 2006and 2017; and Gardens by the Bay,
    Singapore, in 2021. Chihuly has shown his work in solo exhibitions at museums including the de
    Young Museum, San Francisco, in 2008; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2011; Virginia Museum of
    Fine Arts, Richmond, in2012; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, in 2013; Royal Ontario Museum,
    Toronto, in 2016; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2017;
    Groninger Museum, Groningen, the Netherlands, in 2018; and Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum,
    Naples, Florida, in 2020. Chihuly Garden and Glass, a major long-term exhibition, opened in Seattle
    in 2012.

     
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PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF JUDY FREEMAN, NEW YORK

69

Early neon sculpture

ca. 1969
Hand-blown colored glass, neon, electrical components.
13 x 36 x 21 in (33 x 91.4 x 53.3 cm)

Estimate
$20,000 - 30,000 

Sold for $22,500

Design

15 June 2012
New York