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Property from the Collection of Sylvia Stone
Born in Canada in 1926, the abstract painter and pioneering sculptor Sylvia Stone moved to New York in 1946 to take classes at the Art Students League where she studied with Harry Sternberg and Vaclav Vytlacil. In the late 1950s, she joined a group of artists including Al Held (with whom she entered into a long-term relationship and married in 1969), Ronald Bladen and George Sugarman, all of whom exhibited their work at the Brata Gallery. In the 1960s, she began to create sculptures informed by her deep knowledge of Cubism, Constructivism and the Bauhaus.
"The attitude was, anything goes. Sculpture didn't have to be what Brancusi thought, or Henry Moore or David Smith thought. So a lot of us got into materials. You have an idea, and if it doesn't work in one medium you turn to another. It's on the wall, it's off the wall, it's hanging from the ceiling. It could be anything. Eva Hesse, for instance, began as a painter as I did. I knew her, and, like her, I was a product of the time, a hybrid" (S. Stone as quoted in E. Munro, Originals: American Women Artists, New York, 2000 p. 340).
Gaining increasing recognition, her work was included in the Whitney Museum's 1968 Annual Exhibition of American Sculpture, as well as in 14 Sculptors: The Industrial Edge, an important group exhibition at the Walker Art Center in 1969. In 1975 her sculpture was included in the seminal exhibition Two Hundred Years of American Sculpture at the Whitney Museum. Today, Stone's work appears in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Wadsworth Athenaeum, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, The Walker Art Center and the New Museum.
Stone lived and worked in the Soho district of New York City, and taught as a full professor at Brooklyn College. She was a member of a community of artists and critics which, in addition to Al Held, included Sam Francis, Ad Reinhardt, George Sugarman, Ronald Bladen, Philip Pearlstein, Irving Sandler, Frank O'Hara and her neighbor, Alex Katz. The following lots were acquired directly from the artists she knew and loved and have remained in her collection since their acquisition.
Alex Katz (b. 1927)
Portrait of Ada in a Red Coat
Details
Alex Katz (b. 1927)
Portrait of Ada in a Red Coat
signed 'Alex Katz' (upper right)
oil on masonite mounted on panel
16 x 12 x 1 in. (40.6 x 30.4 x 2.5 cm.)
Painted circa 1965.
Portrait of Ada in a Red Coat
signed 'Alex Katz' (upper right)
oil on masonite mounted on panel
16 x 12 x 1 in. (40.6 x 30.4 x 2.5 cm.)
Painted circa 1965.
Provenance
Acquired from the artist by the present owner