Circle Auction
Live Auction

Modern, Post War, & Contemporary: Art + Design

Mon, Jun 28, 2021 01:00AM EDT
Lot 43

WILBUR NIEWALD / Valencia, Mexico (1971 Oil)

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$500 $50
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$5,000 $250
$10,000 $500
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$50,000 $2,500
$75,000 $5,000
$100,000 $10,000
Wilbur Niewald
(Missouri, b. 1925)
Valencia, Mexico, circa 1971
Oil on canvas
30" x 39"

A view of a town in Mexico, where Niewald spent time from 1970-71. Titled to the reverse. Presented in a simple slat frame that measures 30 3/4" x 39 3/4".

Wilbur Niewald has been dubbed "the Patriarch of the Kansas City Art World" by Julián Zugazagoitia, director of the Nelson-Atkins Gallery of Art. Each of Niewald's paintings offered in this auction date from the 1970s, a decade pivotal to his identity as an artist, transitioning from a distinct abstract style to one more resolutely based on natural observation. In addition to a career of creating exciting and influential works of his own, Niewald joined the Kansas City Art Institute's faculty in 1949, where over the course of several decades in a variety of roles (including the Chair of Painting and Printmaking) he helped shape KCAI pedagogy and prepare generations of contemporary artists.

Provenance: From the corporate art collection of a Kansas City based Fortune 500 company, previously acquired directly from the artist.

Condition

There is a one inch tear to the canvas in the left area of the image. Along the top area of the canvas is a long impression where another piece was leaned against it, terminating in a dimple. The issues did not result in any notable loss to the paint layer. No in-painting or over-painting observed under blacklight inspection.

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