Lot 916: Bernard Stern, American 1920-2002- Portrait of

Bernard Stern, American 1920-2002- Portrait of Annabel Hodin; oil on canvas, signed, inscribed on the reverse, 122x118cm. In 1964 Stern began to exhibit in London (his dΘbut was at the Archer Gallery that year) and as the Seventies turned into the Eighties, far beyond - in Caracas, Geneva, Brussels, Zurich and New York. The energy and freedom of New York began to appeal to Stern more and more, and for much of the Eighties he lived in an attic apartment off 83rd Street. His reputation as a painter grew: J.P. Hodin admired "his draughtsmanship, an awareness of tradition and modernism, a perfect sense of colour, an easiness and mastery of composition combined with a touch of humour and above all humanity". Marina Vaizey liked the way he interpreted "a private yet universal world of intertwined dream and reality, expressive always of human mood and thought". Stern himself believed that his best work always flowed when he obeyed Jung's injunction: "In art, let instinct fly free." He was allergic to fashion, untuned to wavelengths, constantly amazed at the primal, instinctive energy that bubbled up when he confronted a new, empty canvas. If he had a special subject, it was walls and the graffiti they bear - particularly in New York. When he lived there, he was moved by the way young people had taken the walls over and used them to "shout in silence". Stern's paintings began to be in demand all over the world - and especially in Japan. Bernard Adams