Harry Engel 1901-1968
Caesar (1958)
Oil on Canvas
60 x 50 inches
Signed lower right
Available but not currently in the gallery. Dated 1958, below signature, lower right. Tag, verso, from Krasner Gallery, New York. This painting appeared in our weekly email on 4/22/16 with the following gallery comments: Harry Engel -- what an unusual figure in our world of Indiana art. But decidedly a part of it. Engel taught painting at Indiana University in Bloomington from 1928 through his death in 1970. But he had a second life as a working artist – one capable of painting nearly any style but with a heavy bent toward abstract expressionism. He summered in Provincetown and was friends with the likes of Jasper Johns and Robert Motherwell. He was represented in several Whitney Annual Exhibitions (of Contemporary American Painting), hanging alongside such lions as Johns, Motherwell, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko etc. Today’s amazing work, Caesar, is completely fresh to market from an East Coast collection. It bears a Krasner Gallery studio tag, verso. This would have been Oscar Krasner Gallery, (not Lee Krasner, Pollock's widow). Caesar would have certainly been inspired by Engel’s 1955 sabbatical spent in Rome and Pompeii. It’s a vaguely militarized representation yet very mysterious. Heck, it’s abstract – words fail. The painting has been cleaned and conserved. A small tear was repaired (<1/2”) and beyond that, it’s in excellent shape. Housed in Engel’s original craftsman frame and ready to hang. A major work by a major Indiana artist (and teacher) working at the cutting edge of a major art movement.
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