72
●
HALE WOODRUFF (1900 - 1980)
Rape of Europa.
Oil on canvas, circa 1958. 1295x1613 mm; 51x63
1
/
2
inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, NewYork; thence by descent to a
private Detroit collection.
Rape of Europa
is one of Hale Woodruff’s largest known Abstract Expressionist canvases, as well as an
important work in the artist’s move from figuration to abstraction in the 1950s.This work is the apparent
sister work, with its almost identical size and palette, to
Europa and the Bull
, which sold at Swann Galleries
on February 19, 2008.There are only four known oil paintings from the Mythic series—including the
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami’s same-sized
Europa and the Bull
, and the smaller
Africa and the
Bull
in the Studio Museum in Harlem. Both of these works are painted in
grisaille
, in black and white.
The Studio Museum catalogue also mentions a
Leda and the Swan
from this series.
Woodruff was a professor of art at NewYork University since 1946, and had just participated in the
exhibition
Eight NewYork Painters
at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in the summer of
1956 at the time of this series. With the important 2007 exhibition at Spelman College,
Hale
Woodruff, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, and the Academy
,Woodruff’s undated abstract works are being
reconsidered; this phase occurred just before his
Celestial Gate
series. Amaki pp. 117, 177 and 180.
[90,000/120,000]