Mark Grotjahn

Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2005

Thun, Kunstmuseum Thun, Mark Grotjahn, September - November 2007, p. 6, illustrated in color

Anton Kern Gallery and Blum & Poe, Mark Grotjahn Drawings, New York and Los Angeles, 2006, p. 44, illustrated in color 

This work is in excellent condition. There are artist's pinholes at all four corners. There is a slight undulation to the sheet as to be expected with the nature of the medium. Close inspection shows extremely minimal unevenness to the hand-cut paper edges as is to be expected. The sheet is hinged at intervals to ragboard and framed in a wood frame painted white under Plexiglas. Please note that the main image for this lot, as published in our catalogue, is slightly cropped on the left and right side. Please refer to the e-catalogue for the corrected illustration.
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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“The butterfly has become to Mark Grotjahn what the target is to Kenneth Noland, the zip was to Barnett Newman, and the color white is to Robert Ryman. Grotjahn’s abstracted geometric figure is suitably elusive. In fact, the more familiar it becomes, the more he refines its ability to surprise and, perhaps paradoxically, takes it further away from actual butterflyness.”
Michael Ned Holte, “Mark Grotjahn,” in Artforum, November 2005, p. 259

Included in Grotjahn’s first solo museum exhibition outside of the U.S., at Switzerland’s Kunstmuseum Thun in 2007, Untitled (Red Orange Brown Black Butterfly 560) from 2005 is an early paragon of the artist’s highly sought after butterfly compositions. The present work is one of two known works on paper by the artist of the same size, date, color palette and composition, the other of which—Untitled (Red Orange Brown Black Butterfly 581)—is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Essentially sister paintings, when placed side by side the two works perplexingly tease the viewer into picking out the subtle differences in their startlingly identical configurations.

Grotjahn expertly explores distinct variations in the chromatic range of reds and oranges, here ablaze against a stark black backdrop, attractively smoldering in their undulating tonalities. Hovering nearby the cerebral, illusionistic vortexes of 1960s Op artists such as Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely, Mark Grotjahn graphically emphasizes the vitality of abstract painting. A central vanishing point marks the center of the butterfly’s “abdomen,” while flying rays dart outward, fluttering across the diagonal lines of the slightly skewed “wings”—their asymmetry conjures the sensation of being captured mid-flight. Grotjahn’s formal evocation of one-point perspective relates to academic conventions of painting developed by Leon Battista Alberti during the Renaissance in order to skillfully render depth within a flat surface. His Butterfly paintings operate within the tension between the ostensibly incongruous poles of abstraction and figuration, complicating the formal correlation between the winged insects and the pictures’ purely geometric organizations of shapes. As Douglas Fogle notes, “Grotjahn’s butterflies hover precipitously close to the line between abstract geometry and illusionistic spatiality, displaying a kind of graphic unconscious that constitutes a paradoxically systematic disruption of a rational and orderly system.” (Douglas Fogle, “In the Center of the Infinite” in Parkett 80, 2007, p. 117)

The radial bands of color possess an unnervingly seductive inner force, an energy that draws the viewer into its kaleidoscopic hold and refuses to let go. Mark Grotjahn has explored the esoteric butterfly motif extensively over the past decade in both drawing and painting, and the present work marks one of the most compelling examples of his obsessive devotion to exploring color, form and scale in a pure and unadulterated light.