Neal Auction Important Estates September 2015

Additional information at www.nealauction.com 65 376. Ida Rittenberg Kohlmeyer (American/New Orleans, 1912‑1997) , “Cluster #1”, 1973, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, 69 in. x 104 in., original frame. $40000/60000 Provenance: William Sawyer Gallery, San Francisco, 1975. Exh.: Painting in the South: 1564-1980 . Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; National Academy of Design, New York, 1983-1984. Ill.: Kuspit, Donald, et.al ., Painting in the South: 1564-1980 . Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1983, p. 328, fig. 159. Note: In the early 1970s, Ida Kohlmeyer emerged from Abstract Expressionism and began a style of expressive and vividly colored painting. The Cluster series was begun in 1973 and is characterized by a dominating grid form. Art historian Michael Plante notes: “the series represents the first style that was identified solely with Kohlmeyer, and she embraced it as expressive of her artistic aims.” By its title, Cluster #1 , is seemingly the first painting created for this important series. A massive canvas which shows a grid five units wide and three rows tall, each square in the grid is similar in size and shape but is painted in a different color and with varying expressive gestural brushwork. The grid is supported and balanced by the white canvas around the forms, a characteristic of all of the Cluster paintings. Cluster #1 was curated for the seminal 1983 exhibition on Southern art, Painting in the South: 1564-1980 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. This ground breaking show, which traveled to several prominent museums, was the first to comprehensively examine the art of the American South. Ref.: Plante, Michael. Ida Kohlmeyer: Systems of Color New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2004, p. 16; Kuspit, Donald, et.al ., Painting in the South: 1564-1980 . Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1983, p. 328. 377. George Bauer Dunbar (American/New Orleans, b. 1927) , “Coin du Lestin”, gold leaf, clay and oil on board, signed lower center, 32 in. x 28 in., framed. $7000/10000 378. Hunt Slonem (American/Louisiana, b. 1951) , “Azure Magpie”, 1991, oil on canvas, signed, dated, titled and inscribed “Hunt Slonem Studio” en verso, 30 in. x 40 1/4 in., unframed. $2000/3000