Lot 178
Doris Lindo Lewis(American, 1909-1995)Homage to Clyfford Still
Ending from 24 November 2025, 13:00 EST
Online, Skinner Marlborough, MassachusettsUS$3,500 - US$5,500
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Claire Dettelbach
Cataloguer
Doris Lindo Lewis (American, 1909-1995)
Homage to Clyfford Still
unsigned; titled on a typed label (affixed to the frame)
oil on canvas
96.5 x 127.0 cm (38 x 50 in).
framed 105.1 x 135.3 x 5.1 cm (41 3/8 x 53 1/4 x 2 in).
unsigned; titled on a typed label (affixed to the frame)
oil on canvas
96.5 x 127.0 cm (38 x 50 in).
framed 105.1 x 135.3 x 5.1 cm (41 3/8 x 53 1/4 x 2 in).
Footnotes
Provenance
The artist's estate.
The collection of Sydney and J. Denis Glover (by descent from the artist).
N.B.
Artist and environmentalist Doris ("Dolly") Lindo Lewis (Henriquez) divided her life between New York, Massachusetts, the Caribbean, and South Florida. Now recognized as one of the very first, if not the first, American female surrealist painter, Lewis is known for her explorations of fertility, creation, and woman's place within the natural world. Lewis was born 1909 in San Jose, Costa Rica, and later moved to Cambridge, MA, where she attended the Buckingham School, the May School, and the Museum School. Summering on Cape Cod from the mid 1920s and moving to South Yarmouth around 1934, Lewis became associated with several New York, Boston, and Cape Cod artists and writers such as Dodge MacKnight, Howard Gibbs, Harold Dunbar, and Byron Thomas. During this period, she shifted from traditional Cape-Cod landscapes to surrealism, exhibiting these works at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and the Provincetown Art Association. In 1937, Lewis married Anglo-Jamaican Edward Henriquez in Havana, where she spent the next twelve years. The two later returned to the states, moving to Florida in 1949, where she began to explore modernism, iron sculpture, and pottery. Lewis played a courageous role in Florida's environmental affairs and was credited by Marjory Stoneman Douglas for her efforts in saving the Everglades. Doris Lindo Lewis died in 1995 at her home in West Palm Beach. Her works can be found in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Washington's National Gallery, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and other collections.
Homage to Clyfford Still was completed in the 1980s and exemplifies Lewis's ability to effortlessly shift between styles. After her time experimenting with hard-edge painting, we see Lewis start to work with more fluid forms. In this composition Lewis draws inspiration from Clyfford Still through her use of his palette, but her complex layering of gestural strokes sets her apart.