Stanley Whitney - 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale Hong Kong Thursday, July 9, 2020 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Private Collection, Europe
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    “Whitney’s colours take on lives of their own. They evoke memory and nostalgia. This orange takes you back to your favourite childhood t-shirt; that blue reminds you of your grandmother’s kitchen. Whitney’s paintings remind us, on a universal scale, of the ability of colour to trigger feelings and sensations.” Lauren Haynes
    In ‘Orange That Blue’, Stanley Whitney: Dance the Orange, New York, 2015, p.28

    Untitled presents us with a seemingly simple composition: coloured rectangles of irregular sizes stacked in four rows, with each band of five to six blocks delineated by a horizontal strip that runs the length of the canvas. Executed with freehanded brushwork that fluctuates between soft and gestural, the considered palette of reds, greens and blues, lemon yellow and black, appear to animate with a lyrically pulsating visual effect. Taking his cues from Renaissance painting, early Minimalism, Colour Field paintings and the call-and-response traditions of jazz music, the abstract grid format is immediately identifiable as African-American visual contemporary artist Stanley Whitney’s signature motif, whose profound relationship with colour and understanding of its spatial effects have been honed over many years.

    Following his successful seminal solo exhibition in 2015 at the Studio Museum, New York, Whitney has experienced a deserving ascent to international acclaim. His works have found a place in numerous public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (both New York), confirming the historical significance of his practice within the discourse of abstract art in the contemporary era.

  • Artist Biography

    Stanley Whitney

    American • 1946

    Inspired by Renaissance painting, Minimalist sculpture and jazz music, Stanley Whitney’s oeuvre has become central to the current discourse of abstract painting in the contemporary era. Following recent solo exhibitions at the Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, the 72-year-old artist has only just received the critical acclaim he deserves. After moving to New York from Philadelphia at the age of 22, Whitney aligned himself with the Color Field painters, often working in the shadows of his contemporaries including Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland. Throughout the decades that followed, however, the artist soon established himself as a key player in 20th century abstraction, traveling the world and gaining recognition not only in the studio, but also in the classroom, where he has taught Painting and Drawing at the Tyler School of Art for over 30 years. As such, Whitney’s influence extends to a generation of new artists exploring the formal tenants of painting today.

    As Lauren Haynes, curator of Whitney’s solo show at the Studio Museum in 2015, aptly wrote, “Whitney’s work interrogates the connections among colors, how they lead to and away from one another, what memories they are associated with…Whitney’s colors take on lives of their own. They evoke memory and nostalgia. This orange takes you back to your favorite childhood t-shirt; that blue reminds you of your grandmother’s kitchen. Whitney’s paintings remind us, on a universal scale, of the ability of color to trigger feelings and sensations.”

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Property from a Private Collector

104

Untitled

2016
signed and dated '2016 Stanley Whitney' on the reverse
oil on canvas
30 x 30 cm. (11 3/4 x 11 3/4 in.)
Painted in 2016.

Estimate
HK$200,000 - 300,000 
€21,800-32,700
$25,600-38,500

Sold for HK$300,000

Contact Specialist
Danielle So
Associate Specialist, Head of Day Sale

20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale

Hong Kong Auction 9 July 2020