Recently Acquired Joan Miró and Dale Nichols

Among our recent acquisitions are works by some of the most influential artists in the world. All of them are American, with the exception of Joan Miró. Miró had a significant influence of American artists like Alexander Calder, Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock.

 

Joan Miró 1893 - 1983

Joan Miró's influence in America was due largely to the success of the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. Pierre Matisse was the youngest child of French painter Henri Matisse. The painters that Matisse represented in his gallery were some of the greatest European painters of the early twentieth century and had a profound influence on the Modern Art movement in America. Alongside paintings by Miró were works by Marc Chagall, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, Le Corbusier and, of course, Henri Matisse.

 

One of Miró's earliest Surrealist works, Le piège (The Trap) sold at Christie's London auction in March for $7,500,912.99, above the high estimate. Two of our recent acquisitions are Le Centenaire, made in 1953 and Chez Le Roi de Pologne : Ubu Roi, Planche III created in 1966. Each lithograph is signed and numbered and reflects Miró's playful use of color and style.

 

Dale Nichols 1904 - 1995

Dale Nichols' tender paintings, of the red barns of his childhood home in Nebraska, earned him the label of Regionalist painter. Nichols left the small town of Davis City to study at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. He spent nearly twenty years in Chicago, working as an artist and illustrator and becoming the first Carnegie visiting professor of art at the University of Illinois.

 

In 1942, Nichols succeeded Regionalist artist Grant Wood as art editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, a position he held until 1948. After years of living a staid and stable life in Chicago as an established artist and illustrator, Nichols moved to Tubac, Arizona, where he established an art school. From there he traveled to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska and Guatemala.

 

No matter where he traveled, he still painted the farm of his childhood. "Farm life was all I knew for the first 20 years of my life." he said, "In painting these canvases, I felt again the vastness of endless skies, experienced again the penetrating cold of Nebraska winters, lived again as farmers live …in spirit, I am very much a farmer."

 

Racing Home is one of our recent acquisitions and represents one of Nichols' finest works. Please contact us if you would like more information about the works of Joan Miró, Dale Nichols or any of the other fine artists whose works are available at Surovek Gallery.

 

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May 25, 2021