"Black with Ochre" Abstract Oil on Canvas by James Grant

This large abstract oil artwork features a large black block sitting on a yellow L on the left corner of the frame. The compartmentalised colour fields offered viewers a powerful and bold overall impression. The painting is signed and dated (1994) at the back.

James Grant was a painter and sculptor most active from the late 1950s into the early 1970s. Best known for his sculptural work in plastics, this work by no means defined him but was rather a natural endpoint of an exploration into increased dimensionality -- starting from abstract canvases, moving through collages and bas-reliefs until the work finally came off the wall in sculptural form.
James Grant was born in Los Angeles in 1924. After receiving his undergraduate degree in Engineering from USC, he pursued his M.F.A. at the Jepson Art Institute in Los Angeles, studying under Rico Lebrun. In 1950 he accepted a teaching position at Pomona College in Claremont, CA, where he was an Assistant Professor of Art for nine years. During his tenure at Pomona, he worked with many influential artists and art historians, including painters Karl Benjamin and Frederick Hammersley, as well as Peter Selz (who later went on to become Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA, New York) and Seymour Slive (Director of the Fogg Museum, Harvard University).
While working in Southern California, Grant had solo exhibitions at the Pasadena Art Museum, Pomona College, and U.C. Riverside, and group exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum, the Oakland Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Art (now S.F. MoMA).
After Pomona, Grant enjoyed a two-year stay in Rome where his paintings began to develop in texture -- moving more towards collage work, using both paint and fabric. His stay was punctuated by a solo exhibition at the Galleria Pogliani in Rome.

Upon returning to the United States in 1962, Grant settled in San Francisco, where his collage work continued. In 1963 he had a solo exhibition at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. During the 60s, he showed regularly at galleries and museums both in the Bay Area (Hansen Gallery) and New York (Bertha Schaefer Gallery and Grand Central Moderns).
In 1970, he had a retrospective at Mills College in Oakland documenting his transition in style from abstract canvases to collages to bas-reliefs and finally the freestanding sculptures.

REFERENCE NUMBER: LU654311513642
PERIOD: 1990-1999
CONDITION: Excellent
MEASUREMENTS: Height: 35.5" Width: 31.63" Depth: 2"
COUNT: 1
MATERIAL: Oil
CREATOR: James Grant