Inventory # PCRE-06197-0127

PROVENANCE
Waltzer & Associates, New York
Al Pyrch, Alberta, BC 1984
Winchester Galleries, Victoria
Hutton Collection, British Columbia
Private Collection, British Columbia
Private Collection, Victoria

American abstract painter Larry Poons is globally recognized as an important contributor to international contemporary art. Perhaps obscured by this international prominence is the lesser known fact that Canadian support and representation plays an important part of his storied career.

As a young painter, Poons rose quickly to prominence, and he was included in many of the most historically significant shows of the 1960s. His work was featured on the cover of the summer 1968 issue of Artforum magazine. His work was collected and exhibited by the Albright Knox Art Gallery, among other leading art museums worldwide. He was represented by the legendary Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. Poons was the youngest artist featured in Emile de Antonio’s highly regarded 1973 film documentary Painters Painting, about post-war American painting. Most recently, Poons was a key figure in the 2018 documentary The Price of Everything which explores the relationship between art and money.

In 1970, he radically shifted his aesthetic style, moving towards a sensual painterly abstraction, and began pouring and splashing paint on his canvases. At this time he also crossed over to the William Rubin Gallery in New York. Many of his supporters were confounded—they were stunned that he would abandon the approach that had resulted in his stature. Canadian galleries and our public art museums became the main showcases for his new art. Whereas his work in the 1960s was aligned with minimal tendencies, mathematics, grids and optics, in 1970 he began a move towards a sensual painterly abstraction, as seen in To Paula (No Regrets). Gravity became an important element to the painting process, with rich rivulets of paint free-flowing and intermingling in seemingly chance configurations. In retrospect these works channeled the precedents of Clyfford Still and Morris Louis. Canada’s admiration for Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean Paul Riopelle and the Automatists might have established a natural proclivity for Canadians to value these new Poons paintings.

Our painting, To Paula (No Regrets), is a reference to the artist’s wife, Paula DeLuccia.

This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings currently being prepared by the Larry Poons Studio.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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