Secret

Details

Harold Cohen (b. 1928)
Secret
signed, inscribed and dated 'Harold Cohen/"SECRET"/March 1964 London' (on the reverse)
oil and acrylic on canvas, unframed
98 x 115 1/2 in. (248.9 x 293.4 cm.)
Painted in 1964.

Provenance

with Robert Fraser Gallery, London, 1965.

Literature

Exhibition catalogue, Marzotto Prize Exhibition 1964-5, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1965, no. 16, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Harold Cohen: Paintings 1960-65, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1965, no. 45, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Peter Stuyvesant Foundation: A Collection in the Making 1965 Purchases, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1965, no. 12, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue, Recent British Painting: Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Collection, Tate Gallery, London, 1967, no. 41, illustrated.

Exhibited

London, Whitechapel Gallery, Marzotto Prize Exhibition 1964-5, January - February 1965, no. 16; this exhibition travelled to Valdagno, Baden-Baden, Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris.
London, Whitechapel Gallery, Harold Cohen: Paintings 1960-65, May - June 1965, no. 45.
London, Whitechapel Gallery, Peter Stuyvesant Foundation: A Collection in the Making 1965 Purchases, November 1965, no. 12.
London, Tate Gallery, Recent British Painting: Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Collection, November - December 1967, no. 41.
Oldham, Oldham Art Gallery, 1966-67, catalogue not traced.
Auckland, City Art Gallery, Recent British Painting: A Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Collection, August - September 1971, no. 38.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis. Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Sale room notice

Please note this work is sold unstretched and unframed.

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Lot Essay

'Harold Cohen's pictures show very clearly how the impact of New York painting affected his generation. Secret of 1964 with its map-like forms and linear rhythms is a picture about communication, the varieties of visual images providing the subject matter' (Introduction to Exhibition Catalogue, Recent British Painting: A Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Collection, City Art Gallery, Auckland, 1971).
Cohen was selected in 1964 as one of sixty contemporary artists to be included in the European Community Contemporary Painting Exhibition - The Marzotto Prize. He chose to submit Secret which was exhibited the following year in his one-man show at the Whitechapel Gallery and subsequently purchased by the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation.

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