Carl Oscar Borg (1879-1947)

Canyon de Chelly

Details

Carl Oscar Borg (1879-1947)
Canyon de Chelly
signed, inscribed with title and dated 'Carl Oscar Borg/Canyon de Chelly - 29' (lower right)
graphite on paper
8¼ x 10¼ in. (21 x 26 cm.)

Provenance

Ashton Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona, 1975.

Literature

Westways Touring Topics, "The Province of Tusayan: A Portfolio of Drawings by Carl Oscar Borg with a Foreward by the Artist", November 1929, pp. 38-39, illustrated

Exhibited

Laguna Beach, California, Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Drawings and Illustrations by Southern California Artists before 1950, August-September 1982, no. 25, pp. 57-58, illustrated

Lot Essay

Carl Oscar Borg had a deep reverence for the ancient ruins of the West and carefully recorded them in works such as Canyon de Chelly. He wrote of his feelings for sites such as this in 1929: "By day or by night this old land is always calm and majestic the ruins that are scattered over it are also a never ending wonder. On the big mesas, on the windswept plains, are these abandoned ruins of cities of the long ago. All this man has forgotten, nature seems to cherish. These strange, spectral, gleaming ruins of palaces and cities in the caves of Canyon de Chelly, Canyon del Muerto, and others all add to the mystery. All of them form questions on our lips. But the answer is hidden in the sphinx-like silence of the desert." (Touring Topics, "The Province of Tusayan", November 1929, p. 35)