Lot 65: WILLIAM EDMONDSON ( circa 1870-1951)

Birdbath limestone 281/2 x 28 x 13 in. (72.5 x 71 x 33 cm.) Executed circa 1940. PROVENANCE Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York LITERATURE F. Maresca and R. Ricco, American Vernacular: New Discoveries in Folk, Self-Taught, and Outsider Sculpture, Boston, 2002, p. 214 (illustrated in color). EXHIBITION Philadelphia, Janet Fleisher Gallery, Miracles: The Sculptures of William Edmondson, 1995, p. 35, pl. 11 (illustrated in color). NOTES Above the shed in which William Edmondson worked hung a sign that read "Tombstones For Sale/Garden Ornaments Stone Work Wm. Edmondson" and indeed, the aesthetic lines between these different ornamental and functional forms were often blurred. Edmondson's Birdbath c. 1940 consists of three pieces and is stacked very much like his multi-unit tombstones consisting of a base stone, a vertical element and a horizontal basin, and like his tombstones, no mortar was used in its construction. Here, Edmondson combines simple geometric forms in a functional object, yet the end result is a powerful and stark modernist sculpture. SALESROOM NOTICE The artist's correct birth and death dates are circa 1870-1951.