Suite of works by Lois Dodd lead the Estate of Metropolitan Museum of Art Trustee Emerita and Benefactor, Eliot C. Nolen, in May Post War and Contemporary Auction, New York
In her intimately scaled works, Lois Dodd focuses on familiar places, often executed in one plein-air sitting: Cushing, Maine, the Delaware Water Gap, Blairstown, New Jersey, or New York’s Lower East Side. Her subjects–both natural and architectural–include bucolic summer gardens, dried leafless plants, nocturnal moonlit skies, and myriad views through interior windows.
Drawing from fundamental principles of observed natural light and repeated looking that characterize the work of artists like Paul Cézanne and Edward Hopper, Dodd adopts an understated palette, and a shorthand of lyrical, rhythmic brushstrokes, with an intentional use of paint applications. Indeed, the suite of superlative works by Dodd included our May 13 Post War and Contemporary Sale in New York–October Barn & Trees Afternoon, Bush + Tree, Artichokes in Midnight, and Moon + Tree, encompass the range and deft skill that typify these principles and formal qualities throughout her oeuvre.
Dodd’s 1997 October Barn & Trees Afternoon depicts a calm, seemingly mundane, autumn scene while Bush + Tree, completed years later, captures the serenity and starkness of a snow scene, all becoming an ode to the natural world’s short-term flux and long-term rhythms. In these works, Dodd affirms she is not striving for illusion, but rather keenly engaged in the material, concrete reality of the world as seen through paint.
Lot 92: Bush + Tree, 2009
Lot 91: Moon + Treetop, 1983
