Norman Lewis - New Now New York Wednesday, September 27, 2023 | Phillips
  • A line of red and black oil paint circles the surface of Norman Lewis’s Untitled (Red Nude), with blots of color recalling the shape of two seated figures, one perhaps resting their head on the shoulder of the other. Created in 1962, Untitled (Red Nude) reflects an understanding that the pursuit of aesthetic goals will in turn reveal the social significance of one’s art practice. Untitled (Red Nude), like Lewis’s Blue Cloud, 1964, and Ed Clark’s Gray Force, 1972, comes to auction from a distinguished Washington, D.C. collection of work by primarily Black and Diaspora artists. 


    In 1963, Lewis became a founding member of the Spiral Group, a collective of New York-based artists, including Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, and Emma Amos, among others, formed in response to the August 1963 March on Washington. The Spiral Group met regularly to discuss the concept of a Black aesthetic, and made art, both figurative and abstract, that directly responded to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.


    Trained as a social realist, Lewis ultimately found freedom to express himself in a more abstract style, where his diaphanous, liquid application of oil to paper produces a rich and emotive effect. “The goal of the artist must be aesthetic development,” Lewis once shared, “and in a universal sense, to make in his own way some contribution to culture.”ii Untitled (Red Nude), as an abstracted exploration, makes such a contribution, and presses against conventional understandings of Black art, and art itself. 
     

    i “’Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power’ to Open at MFAH with New Section on Houston Artists and Roster of Online Programs,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Jun. 2020, online.
    ii  Norman Lewis, quoted in “Norman Lewis: Intuitive Markings, Works on Paper, 1945-1975,” Press Release, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, 1999, online.

     

    • Provenance

      Melanca Clark (acquired directly from the artist)
      Bill Hodges Gallery, New York
      Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2017

Property of an Important Collector, Washington, D.C.

24

Untitled (Red Nude)

signed and dated "NORMAN LEWIS–62" lower left
oil on paper
40 1/4 x 26 1/2 in. (102.2 x 67.3 cm)
Executed in 1962.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$30,000 - 50,000 

Sold for $53,340

Contact Specialist

Avery Semjen
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now Sale 
T +1 212 940 1207
asemjen@phillips.com

New Now

New York Auction 27 September 2023