Featured 1962 Cubist Portrait

I got this portrait at a recent antique fair. The guy selling it said that he was told it was by an Oregon artist, but I haven't found one named "Lew Wallace" (or Lewis), which is what I think the signature says, using the same 'W' to end one name and start the other. Maybe I'm misreading it.

I cleaned it, put on a light varnish, and put it in a frame I had. It's painted on one of those commercial canvas boards, the ones with canvas mounted on hard cardboard you can get pretty cheap. There was no writing or label or anything on the back, but it did look vintage like it came from 1962.

Sorry for the long explanations!


I'd love your reactions to it, good or bad or---, and / or any suggestions on the signature.

measures 12" x 16" (30.5cm x 40.5 cm)



Thanks as always!!

 

I like it Pott- definitely captures the era.It's fairly Cubist whilst at the same time capturing the Cold War neurotic weirdness of the 50's early 60's gonesville. Lookat those eyes eyes.

 

I see pronounced despair an' ennui; sorrow in that face.

 

The eyes are visually confusing. I've found that the face makes the most sense to me when I 'see' the red eye on the right and the blue eye on the left. That seems the most anatomically proportionate to me. In that case, I don't know what the white shapes immediately above them are supposed to be.

 

Considering how potent a force the psychoanalysis & psychiatric movement was in the early 60's- maybe the artist was trying to portray the disparate facets of their psyche in a kind of inner self-portrait. Various aspect/views = a multiplicity of eyes ?

 

There's definitely a shifty- back and forth how to 'see' it which is disorienting. I've decided I personally like it better from a distance. I think the photos here make it look even more chaotic than it feels to me.

I'm putting it in the antique mall tomorrow..