Untitled

Quaytman settled in downtown Manhattan in 1964, where his studio remained for more than three decades. His interest in the interaction of color as well as shapes as diverse as the curvilinear forms of Kufic script and the bend of wooden rocking chairs by Michael Thonet (1796–1871) inspired a group of shaped-canvas paintings from the late 1960s and early 1970s of which this excellent example forms a part. Constructing the stretchers by hand and creating a trough-like field on the canvas’s surface by lining it with tape, the artist would pour large amounts of Rhoplex onto the canvas, sprinkling pure pigments on top and blending them into the wet medium with long strokes of a wide wallpaper brush. The resulting surface is wonderfully dense, nearly iridescent, and craggy with pockmarks and pebble-like outcroppings of powdered minerals. Quaytman’s fresh take on a type of constructivist yet painterly abstraction ties him to fellow New York artists such as Brice Marden and Frank Stella, while his interest in Matisse-like tonalities is seductive to the eye.