Lot 28: Clyfford Still (1904-1980)

Untitled, 1959
oil on canvas
114 x 166 in. (289.5 x 421.6 cm.)
Painted in 1959.

New York, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Clyfford Still, October-November 1969, pp. 62-63, no. 32 (illustrated in color).
Polanco, Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo, Fundación Cultural
Televisa, Pintura estadounidense, Expresionismo Abstracto, October 1996-January 1997, no. 106, pp. 106-107 (illustrated).
Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Clyfford Still: Paintings, 1944-1960, June-September 2001, no. 38 (illustrated in color).
Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Monet and Modernism, November 2001-March 2002, pp. 292-293 (illustrated in color).

Marlborough Gerson Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

"You can turn the lights out. The paintings will carry their own
fire." Clyfford Still

Untitled, 1959 is a monumental example of Clyfford Still's majestic and sublime painting, dating from the latter part of the best period of the artist's work. With virtually every painting by the artist either in a public collection or in his estate (which is forbidden to de-accession), the offering of a Still is a rare event.

Untitled, 1959 is a classic example of his work, with the artist's trademark bursts of flame-like color filling up the top left and bottom areas of the canvas, set off by the stark, lightly primed surface. Connecting the two explosive forms is a delicate and poignant wisp of dark blue that gently rises up from the lower edge, cutting through the orange, reaching up through the void, continuing through the yellow and into the top edge. Untitled, 1959, like all of Still's work, is intended to be an emotional "life or death" abstract narrative. Still firmly believed in letting the viewer make his own interpretations and he went to great lengths to prohibit others from writing about his work at all.

As early as 1942--Untitled PH-334--and in his earliest mature works--Untitled (PH-118) from 1947--Still utilized unprimed or lightly primed canvases. The metaphor of the paint, like a living thing springing from a pure and unmodulated backdrop would provide Still with endless possibilities and he would return to it throughout his career. Still would alternate between thickly painted surfaces encrusted with paint from edge to edge, to spare compositions with only minimal intervention by the artist--Untitled is somewhere in -between the two extremes, with large expanses of raw space contrasting with deliciously worked passages.

One of the relatively few paintings in private hands, Untitled, 1959 has been exhibited in a number of exhibitions, including landmark shows at the Marlborough Gerson Gallery in 1969, his recent retrospective at the Hirshhorn and group exhibitions. In part spurred on by the recent interest in his work, the city of Denver has reached an agreement, announced in August of 2004, to create a museum solely dedicated to the exhibition and preservation of his legacy, which is certain to bring a renaissance of interest for an artist that is widely respected but seldom seen.