Bonhams London
London
share
Save
Saved
Lot 50 Manoucher Yektai
1956
oil on canvas
days
hours
minutes
seconds
Auction date: 24 May 2022
About the Lot
"His style, overrun by thick, torrential impastos as elegant as they are volatile, barely respects the shapes and edges of things. "nature" here suggests a movement that attracts the gestural propensities of the artist. ...there are so many exciting passages - particularly in the several tomato plants in which form and movement are as engaged as in his figures. Yektai continues to grow." - Clement Greenberg Monumental, powerful and enigmatic, "Still Life" exhibits all the lyrical intensity of Yektai's dramatic technique; an artist at the creative high point of his career, Yektai's 1950's work is exemplified by exhilarating lyric flurries of paint, thick rapier like strokes, and a virtuoso handling of impasto. Unlike his later, more sombre, paired down still life compositions, like other works from the 1950's, the present work is imbued with a palpable sense of density and dynamism. Here we may notice the influence of action painting on Yektai's style with its powerful, energetic technique evident in the torrent of lush decisive strokes. This painterly looseness, however, is channelled within a well-contained, tight composition – the unlikely harmony of freedom and discipline writ large in paint. Exhibited at Poindexter Gallery, Manoucher Yektai, New York City, 1957 (Source: www.bonhams.com)
Provenance
Property from a private collection, Los Angeles Acquired from Poindexter Gallery, New York City, 1957
