Details:
① Artwork:
Hollywood
This oil pastel drawing depicts a central figure outfitted in sunglasses—perhaps a stand-in for the artist—walking toward an unknown location. One figure peers over a low balcony looking inquisitively beyond him, while another figure in the background is captured mid-movement, surrounded by shrubbery and the bright white sun overhead. This piece is among the last works executed by Irving Marcus before his death this past March; it epitomizes the artist’s characteristic approach to high-keyed color and inventive compositions. According to art historian Francesca Wilmott, the artist has a "singular ability to hold formalism and postmodern irreverence in tension." His images are products of our media-saturated world—a world increasingly beleaguered by distortions between reality and fiction.
Specs:
③ Artist:
In his figurative paintings and drawings, Irving Marcus often depicts subjects drawn directly from newspaper headlines—a practice he began in the early 1960s. He dramatically combines, flips and rearranges source images into rigorous formal compositions that are deeply incompatible with their origins. Marcus’ wildly delirious work combines formalism with irreverence in ecstatic and kaleidoscopic hues.
BIO:
Irving Marcus (b. 1929 in Minneapolis, Minnesota; d. 2021 in Sacramento, California) was among the first artists approached by Adeliza McHugh to exhibit at her now legendary Candy Store Gallery in Folsom, California. Marcus had five solo exhibitions at Candy Store Gallery between 1965–1976. His work is included in the Candy Store Gallery exhibitions at the Crocker Art Museum at California State University (2022), Sacramento and the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis in California (2022).
Group exhibitions showing his work include: The Candy Store at Parker Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2018); and Kinder, Gentler Nation at Karma Gallery in New York City (2018).
Marcus’ work was the subject of a retrospective exhibition and catalogue at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA in 2018. Parker Gallery presented its first solo exhibition with the artist the following year.
Marcus’ work is held in numerous public collections, including: the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio; American River College in Sacramento, California; the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, Texas; the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California; the De Young Museum in San Francisco, California; the Minneapolis Institute Of Art in Minneapolis, Minnesota; the New Britain Museum Of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut; the Oakland Art Museum in Oakland, California; Reed College in Portland, Oregon; the San Jose Museum Of Art in San Jose, California; and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut.
This oil pastel drawing, among the last works executed by the artist before his death, depicts a figure in sunglasses—a perfect example of the artist’s characteristic approach to high-keyed color and inventive compositions.More
- Unframed
- Signed and dated
- Image size is 14.25 x 20.25 in.
