Details
MANOUCHER YEKTAI (1921, TEHRAN - 2019, NEW YORK)
Untitled
signed and dated ‘Yektai 65’ (lower right)
oil on canvas
36 x 30 1/8in. (91.5 x 76.5cm.)
Painted in 1965
Provenance
Private Collection.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

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Marie-Claire Thijsen
Marie-Claire Thijsen Head of Sale, Associate Specialist

Lot Essay

Manoucher Yektai was one of the foremost artists of the New York School in the 20th century, praised for his intense, lyrical pieces that maneuver between naturalism and abstraction. Celebrating quotidian beauty, his works are elevated by a vivid blending of cultures. Emigrating from Iran to New York in 1948, the artist integrated his artistic training across Tehran, Paris and ultimately New York to be recognised as one of the founding members of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism.

Yektai’s works during the 1950s and 1960s were characterised by a reinvestigation of the still life, such as the present work, while simultaneously highlighting the notion of space within the canvas. Yektai worked on his paintings from the floor, a feature that contributed to their visual dynamism and channeled a mid-century sense of artistic freedom. Invigorating bursts of colour, sharp slashes, and wedges of impasto register his expressive gestures. Yektai created a new painterly language that he achieved by distancing himself from complete abstraction. While his still lives are his most sought after works, Yektai also produced portraits and landscapes.

Studying at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Atelier of André Lhote in Paris, Yektai then went on to study at the Art Students League of New York with Robert Hale. Finding himself in New York following the end of the Second World War, he was readily engaged with New York School artists and gained the admiration of the renowned gallerist Leo Castelli in 1952, who promoted his talent alongside Abstract Expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline.

The artist has widely exhibited internationally including solo exhibitions with Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York; Picadilly Gallery, London; Galerie Zand, Tehran and Karma Gallery, New York, alongside group at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Birmingham Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and Corcoran Gallery, Washington, amongst others. Yektai’s work can be found in private and public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington; Detroit Institute of Arts; Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Alongside his paintings, Yektai was also noted for his poetry, publishing numerous compilations of his works and longer epic poems in Persian tradition that would later be performed as plays in Iran and also the US.

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