Foliage/Indoors and Out, 1980

Provenance

The artist

Estate of above

Arlene Bujese Gallery, East Hampton

Private collection, acquired from above

Sale, Christie’s, New York, New York, September 29, 2023, lot 171, from above

Exhibited

Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York, Still Life Paintings and Drawings by East End Artists, March 29–­May 17, 1981

Arlene Bujese Gallery, East Hampton, New York, Twenty-One Ways of Looking, October–November 2003

Related Work

Winter Still Life, 1980, oil on canvas, 32 x 42 inches, signed and dated lower right; Private collection

Note: Painted nine years before her death, this work marks a departure from the abstract expressionist style of many of Elaine de Kooning’s later paintings. The artist is quoted as stating, “I always say I’m an escape artist. Style is something I’ve always tried to avoid. I’m more interested in character. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied or imposed on it.”[1] De Kooning created another version of this floral composition on a horizontal canvas, painted in the same year as Foliage/Indoors and Out.

[1] Elaine de Kooning, as told to the critic Rose Slivka, quoted in Grace Glueck, “Elaine de Kooning, Artist and Teacher, Dies at 68,” The New York Times, February 2, 1989, https://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/02/obituaries/elaine-de-kooning-artist-and-teacher-dies-at-68.html.