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JOSÉ CLEMENTE OROZCO
Study for “Sleeping (The Family).”
Pencil and brush and gray wash on cream wove paper, circa 1930. 380x474 mm; 15x18
inches. Signed in pencil, lower right recto. Ex-collection Fazzano, Cranston, Rhode Island,
probably acquired from Alma Reed, NewYork.
The same-titled painting to which this drawing relates, now in the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art (accession number 41.2927), was exhibited in NewYork at Delphic Studios
(Alma Reed’s gallery) and subsequently acquired by the collector Albert Bender.
According to Orozco scholar Diane Miliotes, the current drawing is likely an undocumented,
hybrid drawing by Orozco, perhaps a finished study for the painting or possibly a drawing
made by Orozco to record the painting and reproduce it as a lithograph. Miliotes draws
attention to similarly-handled lithographs from Orozco’s NewYork period, late 1920s/early
1930s, such as
Vaudeville in Harlem
and
Requiem
both from 1928 (Hopkins 13 and 9). Like the
currect drawing, she notes, “These feature a frame and spare, bold outlines of forms that
would have been easily transferred to the zinc plates and thus provide the basis for further
elaboration of the composition,” (Miliotes, letter to current owner, December 26, 2011).
[15,000/20,000]