Sale 2487 - African-American Fine Art, October 4, 2018

37 c CHARLES ALSTON (1907 - 1977) Untitled (New York Cityscape) . Oil on linen canvas, circa 1948. 514x616 mm; 20 1 / 4 x24 inches. Signed in oil, lower right. Provenance: BrooklynMuseum, NewYork (deaccessioned); private collection, NewYork (2007). This striking urban abstraction by Charles Alston is an important painting, a very scarce example of the artist’s first foray into abstraction in the postwar period. In 1948, Alston had began working with Hale Woodruff on their two murals for the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, Los Angeles. But Alston’s transformation into an abstract painter had already began with his return to art studies. Attending Pratt Institute from 1944-45, funded by the G.I. Bill,