untitled

 

Norman Carton

  1908 - 1980 (biography)

c. 1947  

etching with watercolor washes 

12 1/8 x 10 1/4" platemark 

pencil, lower left 

not stated 

signed in plate, lower right 

 

smooth, stiff antique-white wove 

published 

artist 

17523 

$350.00 

Norman Carton had sold his share of the fabric design company he had cofounded in Philadelphia, opting to focus on building his fine art and education career. His early work had been more realist in nature at the beginning of his career, but after visiting France on a fellowship to study the modern artists of France and Spain, his attention turned to Abstraction. Particularly, Abstract Expressionism, a term first coined by artist Elaine de Kooning in the early 1950s. This untitled abstract of a female figure shows the beginning of his transition from hard Abstraction, with clearly defined shapes and lines, into something more impressionistic, with deliberate blurring of the colors through the use of the wiped plate and brief, delicate textures that read softer than most Abstract Expressionist pieces popular at the time.