NORMAN LEWIS (1917 - 1979)
Tenement.

Oil on masonite board, 1947. 508x610 mm; 20x24 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left recto. Titled in oil, upper right verso.

Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, New York; thence by descent, private collection, New York.

This modernist and urbane painting is a striking example of the earliest abstraction by Norman Lewis. By fall 1946, Lewis joined the Marian Willard Gallery in New York, and began a new series of linear abstract paintings in the spring of 1947. In this painting, Lewis constructs a wonderfully dense composition of rectangular linear forms derived from elements of New York tenement buildings - windows, fire escapes and iron work. Tenement balances linear layers with painterly passages of opaque warm and cool color. Colors from this palette also appear in his Meeting, 1947. A year later, Lewis revisited this subject and painted the more abstract, nocturnal Tenement, 1948. His first solo exhibition at the Willard Gallery in 1949 included six paintings from 1947. Fine pp. 60-62, 254.