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Lot 34
DAVID PARK(1911-1960)Portrait of Stephen Pepper, 1955
17 February 2023, 13:00 PST
Los AngelesSold for US$35,655 inc. premium
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Sharon Squires
Head of Department, Post-War & Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Contemporary Art (US)
Made in California (US)
DAVID PARK (1911-1960)
Portrait of Stephen Pepper, 1955
signed and dated 'David Park '55' (upper right)
oil on canvas
17 x 14 in.
43.2 x 35.6 cm.
signed and dated 'David Park '55' (upper right)
oil on canvas
17 x 14 in.
43.2 x 35.6 cm.
Footnotes
Provenance
The Collection of Stephen Pepper (acquired directly from the artist)
Private Collection (acquired by descent from the above)
Acquired by descent from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Oakland, The Oakland Museum of California; Dayton, OH, Dayton Art Institute, Contemporary Bay Area Figurative Painting, including paintings by Richard Diebenkorn and David Park from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 1957
Literature
Boas, Nancy, David Park: A Painter's Life, University of California Press, 2012, p. 197
"I saw that if I would accept subjects, I could paint with more absorption, with a certain enthusiasm for the subject which would allow some of the aesthetic qualities such as color and composition to evolve more naturally" - David Park
The founding member of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, David Park established a historical new era of painting that has since become a defining movement of the region. Initially interested in Abstract Expressionism, Park changed directions in favor of a figurative style which consequently looked quite avant-garde amongst contemporary popular aesthetics. Painted at the peak of his artistic career, the present lot, Portrait of Stephen Pepper, completely encapsulates the quintessential character of Park's energized yet poetic artistic style. The sitter of the portrait, Stephen Pepper, was a dear friend of the artist. Pepper was also a distinguished professor and chair of the Art Department, and later the Head of the Philosophy Department, at the University of California, Berkeley. When Park applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship, Pepper endorsed his candidacy stating that Park "carries on the intellectual Emerson-like attitude, together with a bit of rebellion which has kept him a painter against hard odds, and with a lot of emotional insight" (Boas, Nancy, David Park: A Painter's Life, P. 155).
David Park has been the subject of over thirty solo exhibitions, including a recent major retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2021-22. His work is included in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Oakland Museum of California, Oakland; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR.
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