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MERTON SIMPSON (1928 - 2013 )
Night Village
.
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1956-1960. 610x762 mm; 24x30 inches. Signed in ink (faded), lower right
recto.Titled in ink, verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, NewYork, with the artist’s gallery label on the verso;
private collection, NewYork.
Night Village
is an excellent, early example of this artist’s mid-century abstraction. In 1956, Merton
Simpson was a young NewYork painter who had just completed his service in the Air Force, and
whose career was on the rise.Two years earlier, Simpson had been included in a group exhibition
at Bertha Schaefer Gallery, a watercolor exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the
exhibition
Younger American Painters
at the Guggenheim Museum, all NewYork.The artist apparently
painted other works in this series; another painting, oil on board, identified as
Night Village
was
photographed by CarlVanVechten in 1959.An image of this painting and portraits of the artist with
other paintings are in Van Vechten’s archives in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University. By 1960, the artist had his first solo exhibition at the Krasner Gallery, NewYork.
[7,000/10,000]
