George Condo - Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Friday, May 11, 2012 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Simon Lee Gallery, London
    Sale: Phillips de Pury & Co., New York, Under The Influence, March 31, 2008, lot 117
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    In the viewer’s mind, jazz and abstraction are connected, not only because hard-bop and abstract expressionism occurred at the same time, but because both were emphasizing a similar artistic approach: a greater sense of freedom embedded in the idea that art provides the innermost expression of the individual… George Condo acts like the archaeologist who has brought forth something which is latent in our consciousness. He is not merely reviving an ancient style, but is reformulating it at the speed of our age.
    (O. Berggruen, George Condo: Portraits Lost in Space, New York, 1999, p. 30)

  • Artist Biography

    George Condo

    American • 1957

    Picasso once said, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." Indeed, American artist George Condo frequently cites Picasso as an explicit source in his contemporary cubist compositions and joyous use of paint. Condo is known for neo-Modernist compositions staked in wit and the grotesque, which draw the eye into a highly imaginary world. 

    Condo came up in the New York art world at a time when art favored brazen innuendo and shock. Student to Warhol, best friend to Basquiat and collaborator with William S. Burroughs, Condo tracked a different path. He was drawn to the endless inquiries posed by the aesthetics and formal considerations of Caravaggio, Rembrandt and the Old Masters.

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157

Memory of Spain

1991
oil on canvas
82 x 78 1/8 in. (208.3 x 198.4 cm)
Signed, titled, and dated "George Condo 91 Memories of Spain" on the reverse.

Estimate
$200,000 - 300,000 

Sold for $200,500

Contemporary Art Day Sale

Contemporary Art Day
11 May 2012
New York