23

Hale Aspacio Woodruff

(1900-1980)

Desert Rocks.

Oil on masonite board, circa 1949.
Signed in oil, lower right.
24 x 36 in. (61 x 91.4 cm.), Frame: 25 1/2 x 37 1/4 in. (64.8 x 94.6 cm.)

  • Provenance:
    Estate of Dr. J. Eugene Grigsby, Jr.
  • Exhibited:
    The Search for Freedom: African American Abstract Painting 1945-75, Kenkeleba Gallery, New York, NY, May 19 - July 14,1991.
  • Literature:
    Ann Gibson, Frank Bowling, Steve Cannon and Thomas McEvilley The Search for Freedom: African American Abstract Painting, 1945-75, Kenkeleba Gallery, New York, pl. 15, p. 70.
  • Notes:
    This striking modernist composition by Hale Woodruff is a significant painting – one of his earliest known abstractions. In 1946, Hale Woodruff left his position at Atlanta University and joined the New York University faculty. Woodruff also became associated with the growing New York school of Abstract Expressionism at the time. In 1949, he and Robert Iglehart, a fellow professor and chairman of the painting department at NYU, joined sculptor Tony Smith to turn Studio 35, a space formerly run by such artists as Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, into exhibition and studio space for their students. In the 1950s, Woodruff went on to have three solo exhibitions at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York.

    This painting's imagery was likely found on Woodruff's 1948 tour of Califorina with Charles Alston to study its landscape and history in preparation for their twin mural commission for Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in Los Angeles. Their research tour included a sketching trip to the Mojave Desert; Woodruff's mural The Negro in California History–Settlement and Development, completed in 1949, included several landscapes. Woodruff further developed an interest in abstraction with his passion for African Art in his 1950-51 Art of the Negro mural cycle for the Trevor Arnett Library at Atlanta University. Eugene Grigsby, who had been an undergraduate student of Hale Woodruff's at Morehouse College, in 1949 was a doctoral candidate in art history and a friend of his mentor at New York University.
  • Condition:
    Please contact the Specialist for the auction to request a condition report.

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April 2, 2026 12:00 PM EDT
New York, NY, US

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