CHARIMON VON WIEGANDCollage #107 Ascending.Paper collage and acrylic on card, 1954. 269x107 mm; 10½x4¼ inches. Signed in pen and ink, lower left recto and signed, dated, titled, and inscribed in ink, verso. Provenance: Private collection, New Jersey.Wiegand (1896-1983) was a New York based abstract painter, writer, collector, benefactor and art critic. She started to paint in 1926 while receiving psychoanalytic therapy and encouragement from her friend and painter, Joseph Stella. Wiegand was in Moscow as a journalist from 1929 to 1932, where the Fauve paintings in the Morosof Collection inspired her imagination and desire to paint seriously. When she returned to New York in 1932, she became part of the cultural avant-garde and developed a close circle of friends such as John Graham, Carl Holty, Hans Richter, Joseph Stella and Mark Tobey, all artists who similarly shared a belief that art should be made from physical beauty and spirituality. She became an associate member of the American Abstract Artists in 1941, a full member in 1947, exhibited with them from 1948, and later even became its president from 1951 to 1953.