Description

Do you like still lifes, but are looking for something a bit more modern?  Then this is a good one for you.  Painted by American artist Alice Forman, this large colorful work has a distinctly modern feel due to her strategic use of black.  We also love the hint of a landscape behind the curtain.   

Details

• Alice Forman (American, 1931- )
• Ranunculas
• Oil on canvas
  
• Signed in lower right hand corner
  
• 35 1/2" x 41 1/4" (overall) 34" x 40" (sight)
• Likely original artist frame with Martha Lincoln gallery label on verso
• Condition notes: frame has wear but presents well

About the Artist

Alice Forman was born in 1931 in New York City, and studied at the Art Students League during the 1950s. In his autobiography, Painting Below Zero, James Rosenquist tells the story of how Forman and other Art Student League students helped him out in 1957 when he was struggling financially. “So I headed back to Manhattan where my fellow students at the Art Student League Takeshi Asada, Jo Warner and Alice Forman shared a loft with Chuck Hinman. They said ‘Well, Jim, you could sleep there at night because we only paint there in the daytime.’ They had a sink and that was it — a toilet and a sink — but I slept there.” Forman’s and Rosenquist’s friendship was a lasting one, and they went on to share a studio in East Hampton for many years. 

As expected from an art student of the fifties, Forman’s earlier works were abstractions. Her work was featured in the “Young America 1960” show at the Whitney Museum that also included Alex Katz, Wolf Kahn, and other prominent artists; and she was a member of the 10th Street cooperative Camino Gallery along with Elaine de Kooning. When the Camino closed in 1963, she moved uptown to the high-profile Phoenix Gallery.

In her later years Forman taught studio art at Vassar College and explored a more modern take on still lifes which were exhibited in galleries in New York, the Hamptons and Florida.