The collects ion of Dr. M. Wallace and Mrs. Faega Friedman embodies a standard of excellence in Postwar Art, bringing together diverse artistic perspectives and aesthetic gestures into a unified whole. Led by Kenneth Noland’s seminal Target Painting Ember, the collects ion charts a course through the period’s most celebrated movements, highlighting the works of Alexander Calder, Ruth Asawa, Robert Motherwell, Richard Diebenkorn and Louise Nevelson in concert with one another. Bringing together Color Field painting and the Bay Area Figurative Movement with their antecedents in Abstract Expressionism, the Friedmans' collects ion is defined foremost by quality rather than style. Despite the range of artists represented, salient thematic threads emerge among the works, with a dual focus on both established New York artists with more avant-garde West Coast luminaries, as well as an emphasis on color and form at their most elemental, coming to the fore. A test.mes nt to the strong vision underlying the group, the Friedman’s acquired important works by female artists, including Ruth Asawa, decades before her ascendance in the market and broader cultural contexts, underscoring the primacy of quality in assembling the collects ion. An irreplaceable and singular collects ion that speaks to the best of Postwar Art, Replica Shoes ’s is honored to be offering The collects or’s Eye: Property from the collects ion of Dr. M. Wallace and Mrs. Faega Friedman as a highlight of the October 2 Contemporary Curated sale.
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust
“I started in 1962 when a friend of ours brought a desert plant from Death Valley and said, ‘Here’s something for you to draw.’ I tried to draw it, but it was such a tangle that I had to construct it in wire in order to draw it. And then I got the idea that I could use it as a way to work in wire. I began to see all the possibilities: opening up the center and then making it flat on the wall, and putting it on a stand.”
A
llusive to both the natural world and the fundamental components of the creative process, Ruth Asawa’s Untitled (S.669, Freestanding Tied-Wire, Closed Center, Six-Branched Tree Form) is an aesthetically striking and conceptually foundational work in the artist’s oeuvre. Executed shortly after the artist began making tied-wire sculptures in 1962, the present work visually echoes various forms found in nature, including trees and fractal relationships, while also functioning as a rare bridge to Asawa’s artistic process, mediating her understanding of form and space into a tangible object. Meticulously constructed using copper weld and ties, the present work bespeaks Asawa’s career-long objectives of investigating notions of surface, interior and exterior, redefining traditional conceptions of sculpture in the process.