Wifredo ARCAY OCHANDARENA (1925-1997) [CUBA] - Lot 54

Wifredo ARCAY OCHANDARENA (1925-1997) [CUBA] Triptic I, II, III, 1952 Oil and mixed media on 3 isorel panels. Signed, titled, located and dated on the back. Dimensions: panel 1: 111.7 x 124.2 cm, panel 2: 111.8 x 104 cm, panel 3: 112 x 112 cm Provenance : - Artist's studio - Private collection Exhibition: - 7th Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Paris, July 18-August 17, 1952, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, listed under no. 10. Our triptych is undoubtedly the most important work of the artist's early Parisian period. It was exhibited at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1952 (see photograph of the painter posing in front of the triptych). This annual salon was created in 1946 by the leaders of abstraction, Sonia Delaunay, Auguste Herbin, Jean Arp, Jean Gorin, Van Doesburg... It was the post-war continuation of the Abstraction- Création movement, created in 1931 by the proponents of geometric abstraction. The Salon des Réalités Nouvelles became the figurehead of non-figurative art, accompanied by the publication of an annual booklet in 1947, the distribution of which led to the international expansion of the movement. This triptych is marked by oblique, rhythmic forms, elegantly articulated, which are the hallmark of the art of Jean Dewasne, whose courses Arcay was taking at the Atelier d'Art Abstrait at the time. The architecture, colored in blue and yellow (the latter brightened by its complementary violet), is formidably luminous, though dampened by black and white poles that introduce a totally neutral light.