Mark Grotjahn - Contemporary Art Part II New York Friday, May 14, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance


    Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

  • Catalogue Essay

    “…Grotjahn’s works assault you with heavily abstracted and sometimes multiplying eyes that combine with line work to overtly borrow from and reminisce about Picasso’s own lifting of styles and moves from “primitive” art. But as Picassoid as they are, Grotjahn’s paintings also are reminiscent of work by a number of proto- and early modernists, as well as a host of primitive-by-way-of-Picasso–inspired artists from Klee to Pollock to Basquiat. And as much as Grotjahn’s paintings might be considered sums of parts that descend and derive from precedents, they might also be considered as homeradicalized fusions of Grotjahn’s own tendencies previously evinced in more disparate bodies of work ranging from his cartoon-inspired works, to his mask drawings, to his “butterfly” paintings and drawings in which combinations of line and color deliver abstract compositions that register as nonobjective, but which also trigger that part of your brain that begins to recognize depth in a space that seems almost like it’s unfolding between a butterfly’s opening wings. Add to this dashes of both expressionist heat and some Warholian cool, and you begin to get a sense of Grotjahn’s personal code.”
    C. Miles, “Mark Grotjahn and J.B. Blunk at Blum + Poe”, LA Weekly, March 25, 2010

Property from the Halsey Minor Collection

201

Untitled

2004
Colored pencil and graphite on paper.
30 x 22 in. (76.2 x 55.9 cm).

Estimate
$60,000 - 80,000 

Sold for $152,500

Contemporary Art Part II

14 May 2010
New York