This nocturnal abstraction is a very good example of Norman Lewis’s important “black” paintings.
Beginning in the late 1940s, Lewis painted at night, depicting what he saw from his studio window
or on walks in Harlem. His 1950s “atmospheric” works, such as
Orpheus
from 1953 and this untitled
painting, subsume the drawing and abstracted structures under the dark surface of “blackness.” These
darker paintings are a counterpoint to his more celebrated works at the time, the lighter, ephemeral
Migrating Birds
of 1954 and
Harlem Turns White
of 1955. Another such “black” 1955 painting,
Dark
Horizon
, was included in the 1995 Studio Museum in Harlem exhibition,
Norman Lewis, Black Paintings,
1946-1977
, and sold at Sotheby’s on March 9, 2001.Veneciano p. 40, pl. 47.
[30,000/50,000]