Louise Pershing Monumental Mixed Media Painting

Item Details

Louise Pershing (Pennsylvania, 1904-1986)
Untitled, early 1960s
Oil painting with rubber circumference on canvas
Signed “Pershing” to the lower right

A monumental oil painting with central rubber circumference on canvas by American artist Louise Pershing (1904-1986). This abstract work features a circumferential and angular gear-like mechanism rendered with sweeping brushstrokes implying an overall sense of motion. The composition is portrayed with large textural and gestural brushstrokes in black, green, brown, white and intermittent burst of orange. The work is signed “Pershing” to the lower right. The painting is presented unframed.

Louise Pershing was the niece of US Army General John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing (1860-1948). She studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts in Philadelphia as well as the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, and the University of Pittsburgh. Most notably, she studied under celebrated abstract expressionist Hans Hoffman in Cape Cod. Louise was a member of the National Association of Women Artists, the Pittsburgh Watercolor Society, and the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. She had a solo exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 1945.

One of Pershing’s largest works can be found along Sixth Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh. Executed in 1974, The Flow sculpture was produced from COR-TEN steel, a type of steel invented by the U.S. Steel Corporation in Pittsburgh. Inspired by a visit to their open hearth, the sculpture is an abstract depiction of steelmaking.

Condition

- minor wear and negligible paint loss along the edges of canvas; negligible stains, scattred areas of minor discoloration, negligible scratches and small 0.5 puncture to the upper left corner of the composition;

Dimensions

Item #

18DCC649-047