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• Auction House:
  Bonhams Australia
• Sale Name:
  Tony White | The Jeweller's Eye
• Sale Date:
  11 Oct 2020 ~ 2pm (AEDT)
• Lot #:
  54
• Lot Description:
  Joel Elenberg
  (1948-1980)
  Mask 3, 1979
  bronze and black Belgian marble
  88.0 x 65.0 x 24.0 cm (34 5/8 x 25 9/16 x 9 7/16in).
  incised with initials to the lower reverse: JE; numbered to the lower reverse: 1/6; stamped with Fonderia Mariani Pietrasanta foundry mark to the lower reverse: 'FONDERIA M Italy'
• Provenance:
  Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane; Collection of the Late Tony White, Sydney
• Exhibited:
  JOEL ELENBERG, MARBLES AND BRONZES, ITALY 1979, Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, 30 November 1979, illus. on cover of exhibition catalogue (another example); JOEL ELENBERG, SCULPTURE, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney, 16 February - 6 March 1982, cat. 19, as Mask E
• Notes:
  It is remarkable to think that Joel Elenberg's artistic progression saw him turn to sculpture with no formal training. For an artist to have such vision in a new medium is extraordinary, and not surprisingly was acknowledged at the time as having 'most of the Sydney art world eating out of his hand.' Along with his close friend Brett Whiteley, Elenberg forged a new language for Australian contemporary art. Barry Pearce recalls of their relationship 'They became magnetized to each other as physical opposites: the sculptor tall, dark and Jewish, the painter short Anglo-Celtic skin and red hair'. The two artists shared a studio in 1979, the year the present work was conceived. A year later Whiteley painted the elegiac Portrait of Joel Elenberg, now in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Elenberg is shown surrounded by his creations including a maquette of the present work in the lower right corner as well as Figure III (lot 70) in the upper right corner. His marble and bronze sculptures of the late 1970s are lyrical and deeply personal, having been diagnosed with lymphoma prior to his untimely death in 1980. His series of Masks explore the formal visual qualities of non-western cultures encountered on his travels to New Guinea, Latin America and Europe where he had spent time honing his craft at Carrara, the Italian town famous for it's marble. The present work is a heroic visual statement, it's bold simplified form of perfect symmetry is an outstanding example of his late oeuvre. The Mask series from 1979 bear resemblance to tribal funerary masks, as his close friend Brett Whiteley observed, these final works may be understood '... as a majestic attempt to pay homage to the great mysterious truth each of us in our own time must meet'.2 Alex Clark 1. Sandra McGrath, 'Marble star', The Weekend Australian, 14-15 October 1978, p. 6; 2. Brett Whiteley in Sandra McGrath, 'Truth - in marble', The Weekend Australian Magazine, 20-21 February 1982, p. 8
• Estimate:
  A$80,000 - 120,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.