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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  A Private Collection of Fine Contemporary Art
• Sale Date:
  23 Oct 2012 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  9
• Lot Description:
  Sydney Ball
  (born 1933)
  Beam, 1969
  acrylic on canvas and timber
  152 x 229cm
  gallery label to verso
• Provenance:
  Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne; Sotheby's Australia, 20 April 2010, Lot 79
• Exhibited:
  Sydney Ball: The Colour Paintings 1963-2007', Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest, 8 November 2008 - 25 January 2009, McClelland Gallery & Sculpture Park, 22 February - 26 April 2009, Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, 11 November 2009 - 14 February 2010; Charles Nodrum Gallery, 'Sydney Ball - Early Works', 8 - 31 May 2008
• References:
  Anne Loxley, Sydney Ball: The Colour Paintings 1963-2007, Sydney: Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest (illustrated p. 43)
• Notes:
  From his iconic Modular series from 1968-1969, Beam (1969) represents one of Sydney Ball's significant shaped-canvas artworks, painted in Australia while the artist was between extended stays in New York from 1963-65 and 1969-71. Upon his initial return, Ball brought back with him a vocabulary of colour enriched by his interactions with New York's major abstract expressionists, including Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell. Beam represents another step forward in abstraction, introducing an implied space in the voids created in the lower left and upper right areas of the work. This gestalt effect allows for an interaction between the colours on the canvas and these negative spaces, the viewer's experience determined by the wall upon which the work is placed. The colours in this work express a similar 'abrupt immediacy' to the artist's more minimalist works from several years prior.1 An ink and gouache preparatory drawing for this painting can be found in the Arts Centre Melbourne Public Art Collection. The artist's work is represented in all major Australian galleries, worldwide private collections and numerous significant international galleries including the Museum of Modern Art, New York. 1 Sydney Ball, 'Colour and a New Abstraction', Broadsheet of the Contemporary Art Society of Australia, August 1967, p. 5.
• Estimate:
  A$15,000 - 20,000
• 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.