Description

This is one of two aquatints by Larry Zox currently in our collection.  We don't normally purchase "multiples", but we make an exception when the artist, like Larry Zox, was so well-known for his printmaking.  We also make an exception when the artist is so important that a singular work, like an oil on canvas, would be prohibitively expensive and when the print on offer is such an exceptional example of the type of work for which the artist is known.  All of these things are true here.  Moreover, these aquatints are large and from a very limited run.  This one, in fact, is an Artist's Proof, which means that it was not officially part of the numbered edition and was often used for the artist to gift or keep for himself.

The dominant color here -- red -- is complemented beautifully with the slivers of orange, blue, green and purple surrounding it.   It is an excellent example of Zox's superb talent for colorful, geometric abstract work. The size of the piece allows it to work well alone or in conjunction with the other to constitute one very large and dramatic wall statement.

Details

• Larry Zox (American, 1937-2006)
• Untitled 
• Aquatint on paper
  
• Signed, dated and numbered A/P in pencil
  
• 23 1/2" x 40 1/2" (paper)  26" x 43" (overall)
• Newly framed under UV plexiglass

About the Artist

Lawrence (Larry) Zox was born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1937 and attended the University of Oklahoma and Drake University, followed by more study at the Des Moines Art Center under George Grosz. In 1958, Zox moved to New York, and joined the eclectic and vibrant downtown art scene. His studio on 20th Street was a gathering place for an eclectic and colorful mix of artists, jazz musicians, bikers, and boxers. He later established a studio in East Hampton, a former black smithy used previously by Jackson Pollock. 

Known as an abstract expressionist, color field painter as well as a lyrical abstractionist, he began to receive attention in the 1960s, when he was included in several groundbreaking exhibitions of color field and minimalist art, including Shape and Structure (1965), organized by Henry Geldzahler and Frank Stella for Tibor de Nagy, New York, and Systemic Painting (1966), organized by Lawrence Alloway for the Guggenheim Museum. In 1973–74, the Whitney’s solo exhibition of Zox’s work gave recognition to his significance in the art scene of the preceding decade. In the following year, he was represented in the inaugural exhibition of the Hirshhorn Museum, which acquired fourteen of his works. He was featured in other solo and group shows at MOMA; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  In recent years his work has been exhibited at the Stephen Haller Gallery in New York and Rocket Gallery, London.

His many honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation.  He was Artist-in Residence at UNC-Greensboro, Dartmouth College and Yale University.  Over one hundred museums have included his work in their collections. In addition to the Hirshhorn, his work is included in MOMA; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Guggenheim Museum; the Tate Modern; the Neues Museum (Germany); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.  He died of cancer in 2006 at age 69.

Last photo is of Zox (at left) in his studio.