Avigdor Arikha b. 1929

Marlborough Fine Art, New York
Maurice Tuchman, Los Angeles
Sale: Christie's, Tel Aviv, April 10, 1999, lot 110
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

Original canvas. There is slight craquelure by the bottom edge and on the bottle. This work is in very good condition. This work has not been examined under UV light.
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In the mid fifties, Arikha's early figurative work evolved into abstraction but after 1965, he gradually stopped painting, restricting himself to black and white drawings. In 1973, the year in which the present work was painted, Arikha returned to figurative painting. He describes this moment of return in conversation with Duncan Thomas: '...I woke up one morning with an irresistible urge to paint...It came all by itself. It was only much later that it occurred to me how in drawing with brush and ink in black and white, suggesting colour without using it, I had crossed the bridge from abstraction to tonal painting' ('Duncan Thompson talks to Avigdor Arikha', Modern Painters, vol 3, no. 1 , spring 1990, pp. 108-109)