1966 Gwen Stone “C-3” California Modernist Mixed-Media Collage Painting

Details

Description

Artist: Gwen Stone
Title: “C-3”
Date: 1966
Medium: Paint and fabric or canvas collage on canvas
Style: Mid-century modern, California … Read more Artist: Gwen Stone
Title: “C-3”
Date: 1966
Medium: Paint and fabric or canvas collage on canvas
Style: Mid-century modern, California modernism, geometric abstraction
Dimensions: 17.25 inches high × 20 inches wide, framed
Signature: Signed “Gwen Stone” on the reverse
Provenance: retains California Palace of the Legion of Honor exhibition label, registration number 1281.66, dated December 5, 1966
Frame: Original painted wood frame
Country of origin: United States

An important 1966 mixed-media abstract by Northern California artist Gwen Stone (1913–2007). Titled “C-3,” the composition combines painted and collaged canvas or fabric elements in warm orange-red, white and darker crimson. Precisely cut biomorphic forms create subtle dimensionality while maintaining the strong frontal plane associated with Stone’s work.

The painting retains an original exhibition label from the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The label identifies Gwen Stone as the artist, records the title as “C-3,” and bears registration number 1281.66 with the date December 5, 1966. Stone’s address is given as San Rafael, California, and she is listed as the work’s owner at the time of registration.

Signed “Gwen Stone” on the reverse and presented in its original period painted wood frame.

ARTIST INFORMATION

Gwen Stone was an American painter, collage artist, printmaker, educator, critic, poet and playwright associated with the postwar Northern California art community. She was born Guinevere Sasso in Manhattan in 1913 and adopted Gwen Stone as a stage name—“sasso” meaning “stone” in Italian.

Stone’s family moved to San Francisco around 1929. She studied design and figure drawing at the College of Marin and the San Francisco Art Institute before working in theater, radio and fashion. In 1945, she moved with her family to Sausalito, where she became involved with the area’s developing artistic community and eventually maintained a studio aboard a houseboat or studio barge.

Stone joined the Marin Society of Artists in 1959, exhibiting regularly and receiving multiple awards. By the early 1960s, she was teaching painting, drawing and collage at the College of Marin. She also worked as an art critic and interviewer for the quarterly journal “Visual Dialog,” including a published 1976 interview with influential California ceramic artist Robert Arneson.

Stone’s paintings and collages are characterized by precisely defined geometric and biomorphic forms, shallow spatial depth, and the integration of painted and applied materials. Reviewing an exhibition of Stone’s collage paintings at Alamo Galleries in Benicia, a contemporary Artforum critic wrote: “Gwen Stone combines collage with painting to develop a strong frontal plane and hold depth to a minimum.” The critic also noted her use of small dimensions and precisely constructed shapes—qualities clearly represented in “C-3.”

In 1965, Stone participated in the San Francisco Art Institute Fine Art Auction alongside artists including Jay DeFeo, Manuel Neri and Wally Hedrick. Her work was exhibited at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco Museum of Art, Oakland Museum, Richmond Art Center, Redding Museum and San Jose Museum of Art, among other institutions.

During the 1970s, Stone exhibited with the Rap Group, a Bay Area women’s art collective. Solano College presented a fifteen-year retrospective of her work in 1977. She received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1990, and her work is represented in public, university, corporate and private collections, reportedly including UC Berkeley and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Stone continued working into the early 2000s and died in Northern California in 2007.

CONDITION

Good vintage condition consistent with age. The painted surface exhibits scattered marks, light discoloration, small stains and areas of surface wear. The period frame has visible rubbing, scratches, small losses and general age-related wear. The reverse retains its original aged exhibition label, hanging wire and backing. Please review all photographs closely. See less