Marcus de Vestele (1941-2024) - Composition Cobra aux...

Marcus de Vestele (1941-2024) Composition with three figures. Watercolor and India ink on paper, 1974 Signature: Signed and dated lower right: MARCUS / 74. Stamp of the studio on the back: “Marcus de Vestele – Atelier de l’artiste” Dimensions: 54.5 × 37.5 cm Sold unframed Condition: Good overall studio condition. Cream paper, some light signs of aging and tape residue on the back, in line with a work from 1974 coming directly from the studio. Front is clean. Provenance: Artist Marcus de Vestele’s studio. Description: Cobra composition by Marcus de Vestele, dated 1974. Three elemental figures stand in a bright field. On the left, a large lemon-yellow area, vertical and almost totemic, flanks a gray silhouette with a masked face: rough black features, rectangular eyes, a dark mass at the shoulder, and a fine blue line escaping from the skull. In the center, the fullest figure dissolves into the wash: blue-gray head, black ink for the eye, mouth and ear, gray body fading into the paper, black vertical accent. On the right, a third silhouette, darker, head ringed with a halo of ink, stands before a touch of yellow. In the upper right, loose washes of blue and salmon suggest a spectral presence, almost a fourth unfinished figure. The gesture is spontaneous, economical, quintessential Cobra: primitive figuration, tension between human presence and abstraction. The color fields—yellow, blue, earthy pink—structure the space without enclosing it. The work has a theatrical and archaic quality, at once fragile and monumental. A characteristic piece from Marcus de Vestele’s paper production in the mid-1970s, coming directly from the artist’s studio. Biography: Marcus de Vestele (1941-2024) was a Belgian artist best known as a marble sculptor (notably in Carrara with Bardiglio marble). Alongside his sculptural practice, he developed a substantial body of painting throughout his life, long kept private and now sought after by collectors. Strongly influenced by the Cobra movement (Karel Appel, Asger Jorn, Pierre Alechinsky, Corneille, Constant), he absorbed its primitive figuration, spontaneous line, and the tension between figure and abstraction. His works on paper from the 1970s combine the discipline of a sculptor with free gesturality. Directly from the studio, this body of work represents an essential facet of his oeuvre.”

Estimate:$449.48

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