Lot #161 - Mavis Pusey, 1928-2019 (USA/England)

Mavis Pusey, 1928-2019 (USA/England)

Estimate: 5 000 - 10 000 £

Auction ended

Lot Description

Mavis Iona Pusey (1928-2019). 1965. Oil on canvas, size 35,5 x 20,5 cm (14 x 8 inches), frame dimensions 38 x 23 cm (15 x 9 inches). Signed and dated lower left. (In the 1960s, Pusey moved to London to work as a pattern maker for Singer. In 1968, Pusey moved to Paris, back in New York, she took classes from Robert Blackburn to study the painting and printmaking process. In the three years Pusey spent there, she became particularly fond of painting the energy and the beat of construction sites. To her, construction and demolition represented the cycle of death and rebirth, saying herself that "in each of my works…there is a circle to depict the never-ending continuation of natural order and all matter." By 1971, both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art acquired her work, and the next year, she received a grant from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. The painting, Dejygea, displayed at the Whitney, geometrical forms in a variety of geometrical configurations, making space for herself in a white male-dominated art community.)