Robert Natkin

Untitled

c. 1970s

Among America’s leading abstract artists, Dan Christensen (1942-2007) was devoted over the course of forty years to exploring the limits, range, and possibilities of paint and pictorial form. Although his art belongs within the category defined by the influential art critic Clement Greenberg as Color Field or Post-Painterly Abstraction, he both carried on the legacy of this approach while stepping outside of it, through drawing from a wide variety of Modernist sources, using many idiosyncratic techniques, and employing methods more commonly associated with the action painting techniques of Abstract Expressionism. The result is a distinctive body of artwork that is original, surprising, and filled with joy, exuberance, and pleasure in the act of painting. The critic Clement Greenberg anointed him in 1990 as “one of the painters on whom the course of American art depends.” Greenberg viewed Christensen as an exemplar of “post-painterly abstraction”—a term he coined for the movement that followed Abstract Expressionism in modernist progress towards what Greenberg regarded as a “pure art” that would eschew subject matter, spatial illusion and an artist’s persona in favor of revealing the “truthfulness” of the canvas. His paintings employed a variety of tools, including spray guns, trowels and squeegies. The constant in his art was the importance of color and his work shows a continual exploration of the possibilities of color. Born in Cozad, Nebraska, in 1942, the son of a farmer and truck driver, Dan Christensen chose to become an artist when, as a teenager, he saw the work of Jackson Pollock on a trip to Denver. After receiving his B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri, in 1964, he moved to New York City. His “spray loop” paintings, produced by using a spray paint gun...

Provenance: Southampton, NY collector; Peter Marcelle Gallery, Southampton Raymond Parker (1922-1990) was an Abstract expressionist painter who also is associated with Color Field ...

Stewart Waltzer was Kenneth Noland's studio assistant in the 1970s and 1980s, an acclaimed artist in his own right and a noted curator and art critic. His work appears rarely

Exhibited: Tibor de Nagy Poulis is a color field painter associated with the abstract expressionist school. One critic describes his work thusly: "These paintings are about mark-...

Ex collection Carolyn Dunlap Millet Exhibited: Knoedler and Co, NY; Tibor de Nagy, Houston; Berry Campbell, NY Walter Darby Bannard was a leading prop...

If ever the art world could be said to have a Renaissance Man (excluding Da Vinci!) it would be Jack Roth, abstract expressionist painter, poet, photographer and mathematician. He received degrees in chemistry and fine art, did graduate work in mathematics, and would teach mathematics and art throughout his career. Roth is a second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter, known for his Colorfield work. Though he was fully two decades younger than some of the elder statesmen...

1974 Acrylic on canvas mounted on board 6 x 13 in. Titled and dated, verso Framed

1981 Magna acrylic on canvas mounted on board 5 7/8 x 15 in. (14.9 x 38.1 cm) Unique Titled and dated, /81 45" x 116" "HOT PURSUIT" on the reverse Framed

1972 Acrylic on canvas 34 x 65 in. (86.4 x 165.1 cm) Signed and dated, verso

1974 Acrylic on canvas mounted on board 7 x 6 in. Titled and dated, verso Framed

1976 Magna acrylic on canvas mounted on board 10 x 9 in. (25.4 x 22.9 cm) Unique Signed, lower margin; Titled and dated, #265 + B. 72 x 72" "ROYAL COOL" 1976, verso Framed

1973 Acrylic on canvas mounted on board 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. Titled and dated, verso Framed