Coeur d'Alene Art Auction - July 2021

– 120 – 154 Paul Pletka (b. 1946) All the King’s Men (1975) acrylic on canvas 48 × 66 inches signed lower left: Pletka Describing this painting journalist Edna Gundersen wrote, “The erect headers of the southern Blackfoot reminded Pletka of the opulent crowns of Renaissance royalty, hence the title from the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme. The man with the flag attached to his coup stick is not likely an American patriot. Bunting was routinely distributed and especially abundant in election years, and Indians admired its colors and design. The blue shirt is studded with polliwogs, representing renewal and fertility. Tribe members were extremely fond of pheasant hackles dyed commercially or with Chinese vermilion, and they cherished ermine tails, which are affixed to the bonnets in this case. “ All the King’s Men illustrates Pletka’s phase of distorting faces. Stretched and drooping, the faces appear more as masks than flesh, a technique employed to connote a psychological breakdown of identity.” LITERATURE Paul Pletka, Pletka , Northland Press, 1983, p. 62-63, illustrated $40,000–60,000