Allan D'Arcangelo

Fischbach Gallery, New York
Thibaut Gallery, New York
Private Collection
Sotheby's, New York, October 16, 1981, Lot 168
F.B. Horowitz Fine Art Ltd., Hopkins
Rebecca Donaldson & Associates, Chicago
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Utica, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Museum of Art; Louisville, J.B. Speed Art Museum; Columbus, Ohio State University Art Gallery; Macon, Georgia, Mercer University Art Gallery; Jacksonville, Cummer Gallery of Art; Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Art Gallery; Spoleto Art Gallery; Crawfordville, Wabash College Museum of Art; Bloomington, Indiana University Museum of Art; Seattle, Charles and Emma Frye Art Museum; Salt Lake City, University of Utah Art Museum; Cedar Rapids Iowa Art Association; Quincy Illinois Arts Club; West Virginia, Huntington Galleries, Recent Landscapes by Eight Americans, September 1964 - May 1966
New York, The Museum on Modern Art; Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art; Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art; New Delhi, Jalit Kala Academy; National Gallery of Victoria; Sidney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Two Decades of American Painting, October 1966 - August 1967

Exh. Cat., Modena, Palazzina dei Giardini, Allan D'Arcangelo Retrospettiva, 2005, p. 32, illustrated

This work is good condition overall. The colors are vibrant and the canvas is well stretched. There is evidence of scattered fine stable hairline cracks mostly noticeable along the center of the lateral edges, in the right area of the blue painted sky, concentric craquelure at the lower center of the highway, measuring approximately 5 inches in diameter. There is a faint evidence of soling to the blue painted area and in the center of the there are three vertical marks, which appear whitish in color, the longest extending approximately 4 inches. There is evidence of a liquid accretion to the right of the 4th white median band of the highway to the right. Framed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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In 1962, Allan D'Arcangelo embarked upon the series that would become his iconographic hallmark: the compelling image of the road, with no discernable beginning or end. U.S. Highway #1, 1962-1963, debut at the epic Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Recent Landscapes by Eight Americans in 1964.  The series was comprised of five canvases, conceived much like a film-like sequence, admittedly influenced by the opening imagery of the Grapes of Wrath. The imagery conveyed by the camera fixated on the austere road etched itself in D'Arcangelo's aesthetic memory and he in turn translated the experience onto the vast expanse of the canvas. Whilst embracing the mundaneity of the daily experience much as his pop contemporaries, his paintings are a point of departure in many ways as the only social reference lies in the billboards that flank the barren highway. Fare removed from the cacophony of the Pop imagery of his contemporaries, but rendered with the same detached element of cool, the present U.S. Highway I, No. 4 is not only an exceptional example of Pop Art, but also, a rekindling of landscape painting.