George Sugarman, Red and Purple (from the estate of Gene Baro), 1965

George Sugarman

Red and Purple (from the estate of Gene Baro), 1965

Lithograph on wove paper

Pencil signed, dated and annotated "Trial Proof" on the back; bears Tamarind Inc. blind stamp

31 × 28 inches

Unframed

This dazzling 1960s lithograph is a unique Trial Proof - pencil signed and annotated (there were also 20 artist's editions and 9 Tamarind impressions.")
The Museum of Modern Art in NY, and the Amon Carter Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas, each have an example of this work. However, we have never seen any other come to market over the past two decades.
Pencil signed, dated and annotated "Trial Proof" on the back; bears Tamarind Inc. blind stamp
Published by Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Inc., Los Angeles; printed by Bob Evermon
Provenance: Acquired from the estate of renowned curator Gene Baro, Bennington, VT. Baro was a distinguished curator and writer who included Sugarman in prestigious print shows at the Brooklyn Museum and elsewhere. (Baro became, sadly, one of the early victims of the AIDS epidemic - a major loss to the art world.)

GEORGE SUGARMAN biography
George Sugarman (1912–1999) is best known for his whimsical, brightly colored minimal sculptures. A graduate of the City College of New York, Sugarman served in the United States Navy during World War II. After the war he studied in Paris under Cubist sculptor Ossip Zadkine. He returned to New York in 1955 at the age of 39 to begin his career as an artist. He was among the group of artists who came to prominence in the early 1960s including Anthony Caro, Donald Judd and Mark di Suvero, who made large-scale sculpture that spurned the traditional pedestals to sit directly on the floor, in the viewer's space.

His earliest works were carved from single blocks of wood. In 1959 he created his first painted wood piece, these works infuse the often somber, formalism of that era with a playful pop sensibility. Though he continued his exploration of whimsical, colorfully painted forms, in the 1970s he began to fabricate his sculptures out of aluminum. Unlike many of his contemporaries who sought to remove evidence of the artist’s hand, these works were constructed by the artist and painted with a brush. Sugarman was known to first create his works as cardboard maquettes before finishing each piece as a tabletop sculpture. Ultimately many of these works were intended to be fabricated as monumental outdoor sculptures.

Sculptures by George Sugarman are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Walker Art Center and the Kunstmuseum.