Lowell Nesbitt, Orchid, 1979

Lowell Nesbitt

Orchid, 1979

Silkscreen on wove paper

Pencil signed, dated and numbered 144/175 by Lowell Nesbitt on the front

25 × 25 inches

Unframed

This work is pencil signed, dated and numbered 144/175 by Lowell Nesbitt on the front.

About Lowell Nesbitt:
Lowell Nesbitt, who was born in Baltimore on Oct. 4, 1933, was a graduate of the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia and also attended the Royal College of Art in London, where he worked in stained glass & etching. In 1964, the Corcoran Gallery or Art in Washington gave him one of his first museum exhibitions, and by the mid 1970's he had decided to leave the museum a bequest of more than $1 million. But in 1989, he publicly revoked the bequest after the Corcoran canceled a disputed exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, who was an old friend. Mr. Nesbitt named the Phillips Collection as a beneficiary instead. He was frequently grouped with the Photo Realists, but his images were more interpretively distorted, somewhat loosely painted and boldly abbreviated. He had many subjects: studio interiors, articles of clothing, piles of shoes and groupings of fruits and vegetables. He also painted his dog, a Rottweiler named Echo, the Neoclassical facades of SoHo's 19th century cast-iron buildings and several of Manhattan's major bridges. Despite such variety, Lowell Nesbitt was best known for gargantuan images or irises, roses, lilies and other flowers, which he often depicted in close up so that their petals seemed to fill the canvas. Dramatic, implicitly sexual and a little ominous, they earned the artist a popularity with the general public that tended to overshadow his reputation within the art world. In 1980, the United States Postal Service issued four stamps based on Mr. Nesbitt's floral paintings. He also served as the official artist for the space flights of Apollo 9 and Apollo 13.