CHARMION VON WIEGANDCollage #264 The Mountain Way.Paper collage with acrylic on card, 1963. 255x235 mm; 10x9¼ inches. Signed, titled, and dated in ink, lower edge recto and signed, titled and dated in ink, verso. Provenance: Marilyn Pearl Gallery, New York, with the label; private collection, New Jersey.Exhibited: "Charmion von Wiegand Collages," Noah Goldowsky, Inc., New York, March 25- May 3, 1975, number 23.Von 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 including 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.