Mark Grotjahn - Contemporary Evening Sale London Sunday, July 5, 2009 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

  • Exhibited

    Los Angeles, UCLA Hammer Museum, Mark Grotjahn: Drawings at Hammer Projects, 11 January - 17 April, 2005

  • Literature

    B. Goodbody, Mark Grotjahn: Drawings at Hammer Projects, U.C.L.A.'s Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Art on Paper, May/June, 2005, pp. 79-80 (illustrated); Review: Mark Grotjahn: Drawings. Modern Painters, March, 2005, p 101 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    Mark Grotjahn's expressive large-scale multicoloured drawing, Untitled (large colored butterfly white background 10 wings), belongs to a body of work which the artist created specifically for his 2005 exhibition at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Building upon his critically acclaimed butterfly paintings, the radiating wing motifs in this series of works on paper are looser, less tied to a central axis, and populate the composition in greater numbers. In the present lot, five pairs of wings occupy a plane made up of fifteen non-parallel lines that vertically transverse the paper.Clearly well versed in the history of art, Grotjahn's graphic exploration of illusionistic space is based on the Renaissance notion of vanishing lines and one point perspective and references 20th century Constructivist and Minimalist movements.
    His working method is systematic and rigorous but also allows for intuition and chance. For each work in this series of drawings,Grotjahn first set aside the required number of colour pencils,choosing colours that ‘hold together' in value and intensity.Then, having laid them next to him, he chooses one pencil at random and uses it to colour in a single, pre-segmented wing section.

4

Untitled (large colored butterfly white background 10 wings)

2004
Coloured pencil on paper.
164.5 x 119.5 cm. (64 3/4 x 47 in).
Signed, titled and dated 'Mark Grotjahn 2004 Untitled (large colored butterfly white background 10 wings)' on the reverse.

Estimate
£70,000 - 100,000 ≠†

Sold for £145,250

Contemporary Evening Sale

29 June 2009, 7pm
London