Mid Century Abstract Expressionism Signature Help and Opinions

Can't figure out the signature, is it even worth further scrutiny? Not my taste but it looked old enough to be from the period and I found it in Denver which had a strong presence of highly regarded abstract expressionist painters in the 50's.

 

I don't recognize the signature but the canvas and technique definitely look mid-fifties.

 

Not that I know anything about art....

Are the vertical lines made of string embedded in the paint or just paint somehow built up? Looks very three dimensional on the computer screen. If that an illusion?

 

Not an illusion, I think it's thick gesso under the paint.

 

Anund, I don't think it is gesso - can you see the white color of gesso anywhere within the stripes?

It looks to me to be gel medium squeezed straight out of the tube onto the canvas.

 

Anti,
It is white under the paint, the same white that shows in the photo I showed of the nails in the stretcher. I'll see if I can get a photo of it where it's chipped in the red vertical line., not promising I can but I'll try.

 

Then it is gesso mixed with some kind of gel medium and squeezed out of a tube or cookie press. Gesso is not as thick as those lines and it would not "hold together" in lines without spreading - without the use of a lot of gel medium.

 

It's ok, no matter the technique involved - gesso would make the entire gel medium easier to hold the paint onto the canvas. Thick gesso (built up), when dried, is fragile and would have chipped to smitherines by now.

..Well, that's been my experience with it.

 

It looks old. But I would have to title this work 'try hard'. That doesn't mean that the artist doesn't have a 'name'.

The work has an effete quality that is hard to define and rubs me the wrong way. The direct rip off of Rothko and the moody palette doesn't bother me as much as the over-thought additions that distract from those origins, namely the built up ridges, the orange coloring that doesn't always go all the way down, the sad shadowing on the ridges and that single blob that makes it look like it was painted flat on the driveway while a flock of geese were flying overhead.

It comes off to me as a college assignment in a composition class that is trying too hard to impress.

That doesn't mean this isn't by a gallery artist or even a museum artist, some of those artists make effete work, it's just that I don't like it.

 

I know the siggie is usually at the bottom, but I've seen them on the side. Turn it so the red lines are horizontal on top and it looks like an ocean sunset - very modernistic, but still.
Is that a penny on the painting or a circle of dark paint?

 

Thanks lilfont, I very much appreciate your take, I don't like it either. When I saw this in the thrift for $5. I immediately thought D. U. student trying to emulate Rothko or Still.

Thanks Bev, when I bought it, it was in a damaged frame with the wire hanging it so the signature was at the bottom.

 

If it was mine, I'd hang it this way.

 

I was just going to say, I like it better the way you have it turned.

 

I like it better sideways as well. It is good wall art for the times. Photograph it Hanging over a Danish or 1960's sideboard and it should sell. A simple frame made from slat-board can be tracked directly to the canvas, that's how they framed this stuff in the 1960's and 70's -you don't even have to paint it, just sand the cut edges.

 

Yes it looks better as a scenic landscape to me too.