Michael (Corinne) West (1908-1991)
Red Still Life, 1959
Inscribed, signed (thrice), titled (twice), and dated (twice) verso: "TOP / Michael West / Still Life 1959/26-33/MichaelWest/TopWest/1959/Red/StillLife"
Oil on canvas
37x30in.(94x76.2cm)
Provenance
The artist
Private collection
Private collection, California
Private collection, Michigan
DuMouchelle Art Galleries, Detroit, MI, Sale date: February 16, 2018, lot 22013 Private collection, Massachusetts (Purchased from above auction, 2018)
Exhibitions
Casey Kaplan, New York, This Isn’t Who It Would Be, If It Wasn’t Who It Is, January 12–February 17, 2024.
Description
A painter and poet of great spirit and vitality, Michael (Corinne) West produced explosive, highly gestural Abstract Expressionist works. Described by critic Dore Ashton as an “exaltée—someone impassioned, overwrought, and sometimes seized by delirium,” West committed herself to a life of art and voraciously assimilated a wide variety of influences into her oeuvre. (1)
A student of Hans Hofmann and a close friend of Arshile Gorky, West associated and exhibited with members of the thriving New York avant-garde scene beginning in the mid-1940s. Though her early compositions closely resemble those of some of her peers, in the late 1940s and early 1950s West moved confidently into a more original aesthetic mode. Automatism—the practice of producing art or writing by accessing one’s unconscious thoughts and desires—was a central part of West’s creative process. In the late 1950s, the artist began a series of “Automatic Paintings" based on this Surrealist principle. Red Still Life, created in 1959, exemplifies West’s use of automatism, with its vigorous, powerful slashes, splatters, and brushstrokes that coalesce into one energetic mass.
Born in 1908 as Corinne West, she spent most of her formative years in Ohio, first in Columbus and later in Cincinnati. West relocated to New York in 1932, continuing her art education at the Art Students League under Hofmann, though she quit after six months as she felt his following was too cultish. In the mid-1930s, West—like her contemporaries Lee Krasner and George (Grace) Hartigan—adopted a masculine name to obfuscate her gender. Fiercely independent and driven, West sought respect based on the merit of her work, free from the bias of gender. The artist’s work has received critical attention over the past six decades, including exhibitions at Art Centre, NY (1935), Stable Gallery, NY (1953), Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center (1996) and a traveling exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art (2007-08).
1. Dore Ashton, “On Michael West,” in Michael West: The Automatic Paintings, exh. cat. (New York: 123 Watts Gallery, 1999), n.p.