Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art (ETNFA) will present important works by celebrated artists at Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland. The gallery will exhibit James Rosenquist’s seminal Television or the Cat’s Cradle Supports Electronic Picture, 1988-89, an expansive, 20-foot long painting at Art Basel Unlimited. Sam Francis, Alexander Calder, Robert Rauschenberg, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Christopher Wool and Tom Wesselmann will be represented at the gallery’s stall, June 14-17.
Unlimited is Art Basel's unique platform for showcasing monumental projects that transcend traditional art-fair stands. Curated by Gianni Jetzer, Curator-at-Large at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., Unlimited includes 71 works from both renowned and emerging artists.
“We are delighted that our important Rosenquist painting was selected to be showcased at Unlimited,” said Paloma Martin Llopis, the gallery’s International Director. “It is exciting for us and another significant nod to the artist, who sadly passed last year. It is a visual delight and we expect this important painting to receive a good deal of attention.”
Television or the Cat’s Cradle Supports Electronic Picture, 1988-89, is a richly painted canvas with an interlacing of figure, flora and celestial imagery that tantalize the viewer with their complexity. The painting captures the vitality of Rosenquist’s works of the late 1980s and early 90s – expanding on his visual explorations of light, space, and relativity.
Towards Disappearance III, 1957-58, by Sam Francis, will be on view at the gallery’s stand, located in the main section of the fair. Francis, a prolific painter and one of the twentieth century’s leading interpreters of light and color, was influenced not only by Abstract Expressionism and Impressionism, but also by Eastern Philosophy and Japanese screen painting. Towards Disappearance III is sensitively infused with an eloquent and harmonious array of softly tumbling blocks of color. It is the sister painting to works of the same title that are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Joan Mitchell’s Untitled, 1966-67, has never been exhibited publicly. The work is imbued with a rich, vivid and well-varied palette, combined with a dynamic energy and liberated expression of brushstroke. Utilizing skeins of color and form, redolent of the way hay is rolled in the harvest fields of France, Mitchell’s virtuosity as a painter and the freedom and excitement of the sixties are communicated with every wild and rapturous exaltation of her paintbrush.
An important and rare Alexander Calder mobile will also be exhibited. A comingling of man-made and natural objects, Mobile de Bretange, c. 1950, is an array of sparkling glass and delicate forms harmoniously dancing across an almost surrealist visual field. The work has been in the same family collection since 1951.
Tom Wesselmann’s Bedroom Painting #22, 1971, will be exhibited as well. Reflecting the depersonalized elegance and flair of post-war commercial advertising, Bedroom Painting #22 exudes an astute and precocious familiarity with mass media’s impact on modern life. The painting has been quietly tucked away since 1994.
Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, founded in 1985, specializes in modern, post-war and contemporary art and exhibits a broad range of international artists. Located in the heart of New York City, the gallery presents monographic and thematic exhibitions at its flagship on 57th Street. In addition, the gallery brings dynamic programming and important works to art fairs internationally, including Art Basel, Art Basel Miami Beach, FIAC and TEFAF New York.
