Lot 103
RICHARD GORMAN
Additional Images
Provenance:
Private Collection
Literature:
Joan Murray, Naked Eye: Richard Gorman, Lake Galleries in association with Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 1990, unpaginated.
Note:
José Doroteo Arango, alias Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa, emerged during the Mexican Revolution as head of the Division of the North. His commanding presence – paired with his tale of bandit turned general – granted him a mythic presence in the Mexican consciousness. Like a secret held in the mind of this prominent figure, this painting exhibits an alluring passion: a combination of functional shades and tiny prisms of sensuous colour, built-up in sweeping masses of thick impasto. At once dark and luminous, it beckons the eye with its inescapable presence and raw energy. Himself a Revolutionary of sorts, “Gorman use(d) the canvas as an arena for personal combat: with him every painting (was) an upheaval, an act of physical involvement.”