Description:

George Condo (American, b. 1957), "So What?", 1985, oil on canvas, signed, titled, dated and inscribed en verso, "Galerie Bischofberger, Zurich", "Edward Totah Gallery, London" and "di Belle Arte Moderna & Contemporanea" labels on reverse of frame, 8 5/8 in. x 6 3/8 in., original frame; accompanied by a copy of authenticity documentation from the artist. Provenance: Galerie Bischofberger, Zurich; Edward Totah Gallery, London; Private Collection. Note: Known for his dynamic approach to traditional portraiture, George Condo has been highly celebrated for his figurative works since the 1980s, with a signature style that marries portrait painting with art historical inquiry. His particularly rich and imaginative visual language pays homage to a wide range of traditions and genres, bringing together elements from portraits by European masters to contemporary American culture. Condo’s works are most often occupied by singular characters, featuring bulging eyes, bulbous noses and proliferating appendages. The artist describes his portraits as mixtures of various psychological states painted in different ways, reflecting the madness of everyday life. He coins this style “artificial realism” - defined by the painter as the "realistic representation of what is artificial.” “There was a time when I realized that the central focal point of portraiture did not have to be representational in any way,” he once remarked, “you don’t need to paint the body to show the truth about a character.” The first public exhibitions of Condo’s work were held in New York City at various East Village galleries from 1981 to 1983. During this period, he worked in Andy Warhol's Factory, primarily in the silkscreen production studio. Condo was featured in his first solo show in 1983 at the Ulrike Kantor Gallery in Los Angeles. After returning to New York later that year, he made his first trip to Europe where he began working with American art dealer Barbara Gladstone. In 1984, he had two simultaneous gallery exhibitions in New York at Pat Hearn and Barbara Gladstone Galleries. Already close friends with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Condo met Keith Haring with whom he would remain close friends until Haring’s death in 1990. Several of Condo's most significant works from this period, such as “Dancing to Miles” from 1985 which was included in the 1987 Whitney Biennial and is now in the collection of the Broad Foundation in Los Angeles, were painted in Keith Haring's East Village studio. From 1985 to 1995, Condo lived and worked mostly in hotels and rented or borrowed studios between Paris and New York, while continuing to exhibit extensively in the United States and Europe. In the 1985 work offered here, Condo fuses his iconic cartoon-like figure with human form into a state of metamorphosis, simultaneously reflecting a plethora of emotions and gestures. With this single portrait, Condo does what he does best and exactly what led to his status as one of the greatest American painters today – connect the figurative tradition of the Old Masters to the gestural abstraction of the late twentieth century in a psychological mash-up all his own. Ref.: Bonney, Anney. “George Condo.” BOMB. July 1, 1992. www.bombmagazine.org. Accessed Oct. 11, 2021. “George Condo – the Latest Hero of American Painting.” Christie’s. Oct. 20, 2019. www.christie’s.com. Accessed Oct. 11, 2021

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April 9, 2022 11:00 AM CDT
New Orleans, LA, US

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