Analytical View

 

Maurice Lapp

  1925 - 2014 (biography)

c. 1955  

mixed media drawing on paper 

19 3/4 x 24 1/8" image and paper 

ink, lower left image 

 

titled on verso in ink 

 

heavy wove 

 

 

19586 

SOLD

An early mixed media drawing by Sonoma County artist Maury Lapp, done around 1955 when the artist was experimenting with analytical cubism and linear abstraction in his city/landscapes. This work is signed in the lower left and titled in ink on the verso. The composition is a fractal cityscape, featuring the distant profile of a bridge and the staccato formation of a gridded neighborhood, is watched over by a low-hanging moon in this early, mixed media drawing by Chicago-born artist Maury Lapp. Done around 1955, Lapp, then living and teaching in Oakland, California, was experimenting with analytical cubism and linear abstraction in his cityscapes/landscapes. A vibrant example of 1950s American modernism, “Analytical View” is both expressive and contained, capturing the artist’s desire to deconstruct - and rebuild - the familiar. Maurice Lapp, painter and educator, was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 17, 1925. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he earned both a BFA and MFA. Maury studied painting abroad in 1950 on a Ryerson Foreign Travel Fellowship, and in 1956 received a Fulbright Grant. After settling in Northern California in 1952, Lapp began teaching painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. In 1956 he moved north to Santa Rosa, California where he joined the art faculty at the Santa Rosa Junior College. He remained at the Junior College until his retirement in 1992, but his teaching career did not end there. Lapp was a popular instructor and continued to mentor part-time until the age of 87. He had a strong work ethic and painted daily.