James Coignard

Trois bleus en diagonale.

2005

Pastel, gouache and coffee on paper. Artwork size: 58 x 56 cm. Frame size: 78 x 76 cm. Free shipment worldwide. Acquired directly from the artist. Archive number (P90/37) “The heart is an eye,” writes Nobel laureate Octavio Paz in an essay on Matta’s paintings. Matta creates a world coloured both by a sunny faith in the future and by visions of impending doom. Roberto Sebastian Echaurren Antonio Matta, who died aged 91 on 23 November 2002, was born in Santiago, Chile, on 11 November 1911 into a family with Spanish, French and Basque roots, and raised in an atmosphere of religiosity. By the age of 21 he had graduated and begun work as an architect, but his leisure time he devoted to sketching and painting. In 1933 he travelled to Europe for the first time, visiting Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy and other countries, and subsequently taking the initiative to collaborate with the architect, Le Corbusier. As time passed, however, Matta’s enthusiasm for a career in architecture waned, and he began to devote himself full-time to art, making early acquaintances with surrealists such as Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, André Breton and others. Between 1939 and 1948 Matta, like many of his artistic contemporaries, lived in self-imposed exile in the USA, but, after almost 10 years’ absence from Europe, he returned to make first Rome and then, a few years later, Paris his home. Throughout most of the rest of his life Matta commuted between his studio in Paris and his creative refuge in the monastery outside Rome. And it is here, in Italy, that he produced his greatest paintings. Matta’s first retrospective in Sweden was organised in 1956 when his works were exhibited in what was then Galerie Colibri – run by, among others, the artist C O Hultén at number 36 Södra Förstadsgatan in Malmö, Sweden. This was also the time when Matta began to collaborate with poets and other artists in Sweden. He produced the illustrations for Lasse Söderberg’s first anthology of poems, Akrobaterna (“The Acrobats”), published in 1955, and was also responsible for the cover of the Swedish art and literary magazine Salamander. In 1959 the first museum exhibition of Matta’s work in Europe was arranged at the Museum of Modern Art (Moderna Museet) in Stockholm. Held under the aegis of Pontus Hultén, it was entitled “Fifteen Forms of Doubt” and included 15 or so gigantic paintings...

Free shipment worldwide Acquired directly from the artist. Size without frame: 81x65 cm (Size with frame 88x73 cm) “With just a few strokes of his brush he conjures up an entire w...

KENNETH NOLAND Untitled, for Trustees of the Honolulu Museum of Art, 1984 Mixed Media collage with silver and colored foil on board. Signed on verso (back) with personal inscription. "for Twig and Laila" (Trustees of the Honolulu Museum of Art), Deaccessioned from the Honolulu Museum of Art Collection Inscription done in black marker and reads: "A Little Exercise For Twig and Laila With Thanks For A Wonderful 3 Days At ' Cedar House' On The 'Big Island'... 1 Sept 1984 Honolulu Hawaii." Frame included Measurements Framed: 12.5" x 12.5" x .3" Artwork: 8.75" x 8.75" This reflective Chevron collage was de-accessioned by the Honolulu Museum of Art. In 2018, it was exhibited in the show "On Black Mountain: The Bauhaus Legacy in America", April 5, 2019-April 27, 2019 at the Sager Braudis Gallery in Columbia, Missouri, and is reproduced in the exhibition catalogue. Unique signed and dedicated mixed media collage with silver and colored foil on board by the important Color Field painter Kenneth Noland. It's quite a dazzling work, combining color field, geometric abstraction with Op Art, as the work changes appearance and color with the reflected and refracted light. - sometimes appearing light; sometimes darker. See the photos -- there's a light one and a darker one - and they both depict the same work. What's so impressive is that this work literally changes color depending on how the light reflects against it. The artist wrote a personal and heartfelt inscription on the verso to "Twig and Laila". (Twig (sic), which the artist deliberately misspells, is Thurston Twigg Smith, former publisher of The Honolulu Advertiser, who was married to New York philanthropist Laila Twigg Smith. Laila had lived in Hawaii since 1970, where she and her husband had put together a substantial collection of contemporary art. Unfortunately, the two divorced in 1996 and soon after she returned to New York. Two years later, in 1998, Laila died of liver failure at the young age of only 53. Laila was a major philanthropist and art collector who moved from Manhattan to Hawaii. She was a board member of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and a major donor the Honolulu Museum in Hawaii. Laila donated the present Ken Noland...

This abstract artwork is one of a group of over 100 pieces personally selected by the artist, and gifted to a close personal friend in 1969. Please note that this painting was never ...