Sale 2649 - Lot 58

ALMA W. THOMAS (1891 - 1978)

Transcendental.

Watercolor on cream Arches paper, 1965. 546x749 mm; 21½x29½ inches. With the Veritable Papier d'Arches Fin blindstamp. Signed and dated in ink, lower right recto. Titled in ink, upper left verso.

Provenance: acquired from the Franz Bader Gallery, Washington, DC; private collection, Washington, DC (1968); thence by descent, private collection, Virginia.

Exhibited: Alma Thomas: Recent Paintings, Franz Bader Gallery, Washington, DC, September 5 - 21, 1968, with the gallery exhibition label on a fragment of the back board. This important solo exhibition was the first for Alma Thomas in a commercial gallery.

Transcendental is an excellent and large example of Alma Thomas important body of work on paper. The artist developed her abstraction in the 1960s first though watercolor - before painting in acrylic on canvas. The forms in Transcendental are echoed in many works from the 1960s in which Thomas explores light and color that suggest transformation, movement and rebirth. Several similar watercolors from this experimental period were included in the recent retrospective Alma W. Thomas: Everything is Beautiful. Feman/Walz pp. 212-214.