Dan Basen - Untitled (29 Matches), 1964

Dan Basen - Untitled (29 Matches), 1964

"The true measure of Dan Basen’s practice lies in his fluency across multiple mediums, not generally combined in the work of one artist. He was a remarkably fecund and inventive sculptor, assemblagist, and early creator of installations or environments, but he was also a painter and conceptual artist, producing key works in each of these mediums..." - Galerie Gmurzynska
Given that the precocious artist Dan Basen died more than half a century ago at the young age of only 30 – his work is very elusive and not to many pieces are available for acquisition.
Untitled -- (29 Matches)
matches and mixed media on paper mounted to board with artist's frame
Signed and date 1964 in graphite pencil on the front
Provenance: this work was acquired from a sale of works from the collection of the artist Arman and his wife Corice Arman of Tribeca, NY
Unique - Framed
This work is held in the original artist's frame and has been double framed in a museum quality hand made painted white wood outer frame.
Measurements:
Double frame:
12.5 inches (vertical) by 11.5 inches (horizontal) by 2.5 inches
Original artist's frame:
9 inches (vertical) x 7.875 inches (horizontal)
Artwork:
7.25 inches (vertical) by 6 inches (horizontal)
Dan Basen, a New York avant-garde artist who died in 1970 at the age of 30.
The excerpt below is from text by Dr. Jonathan D. Katz, Associate Professor of Practice, History of Art and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at University of Pennsylvania, as pat of Galerie Gmurzynska’s superb presentation of Basen’s work at the 2025 Independent Art Fair in NY, which was followed by a monograph on Dan Basen.
"Dan Basen didn’t have the time to let the dust settle and for his career to thus emerge in broad strokes as an exercise in intentionality. He looks like what he was when he killed himself at age 30, a talented artist struggling with an art world that was slow to recognize his gifts, and a struggling artist with severe mental illness who made work not because of this challenge, but in spite of it.
Basen’s art is ripe for rediscovery because the very identity constructs that would have counted against him in his day—bisexual, mentally ill, Jewish—are no longer conceived as burdens. More significantly still, his work rounds out a picture of the 60s which has focused on a few genre-defining artists to the exclusion of the manifold experimental art developments at this time. Basen was responsible for more than his share of those developments, not least in terms of happenings and the novel performative tendency in 1960s art. But the real qualitative index of Basen’s career is his fluency in multiple mediums not generally combined in the work of one artist. He was a remarkably fecund and inventive sculptor, and assemblagist, as well as an early creator of installations/environments, but he was also a painter and conceptual artist, producing key works in each of these mediums…”
Dan Basen didn’t have the time to let the dust settle and for his career to thus emerge in broad strokes as an exercise in intentionality. He looks like what he was when he killed himself at age 30, a talented artist struggling with an art world that was slow to recognize his gifts, and a struggling artist with severe mental illness who made work not because of this challenge, but in spite of it.
Basen’s art is ripe for rediscovery because the very identity constructs that would have counted against him in his day—bisexual, mentally ill, Jewish—are no longer conceived as burdens. More significantly still, his work rounds out a picture of the 60s which has focused on a few genre-defining artists to the exclusion of the manifold experimental art developments at this time. Basen was responsible for more than his share of those developments, not least in terms of happenings and the novel performative tendency in 1960s art. But the real qualitative index of Basen’s career is his fluency in multiple mediums not generally combined in the work of one artist. He was a remarkably fecund and inventive sculptor, and assemblagist, as well as an early creator of installations/environments, but he was also a painter and conceptual artist, producing key works in each of these mediums.
But above all, Basen’s chief failure was in creating a recognizable style, a brand in his work, refusing that catch-all capitalist category that serves as a mnemonic device in our oversaturated media culture. His curiosity, fecundity and brilliant inventiveness, especially early in his career before his mental health began to decline precipitously, marked him as an artist’s artist and the very embodiment of the 60s revolutionary fervor. But at the same time, his freewheeling, markedly dissident rejection of art market imperatives consigned him to also-ran status. In short, Dan Basen is the anti-Warhol, and it’s high time we allowed the outsider to come in.