62

Hale Aspacio Woodruff

(1900-1980)

Primeval Image.

Oil on linen canvas, circa 1970.
Signed in oil, lower right recto. Signed and titled in ink on the upper stretcher bar, verso.
40 x 32 in. (101.6 x 81.3 cm.)

  • Provenance:
    Acquired directly from the artist.
    Private collection, New York.
  • Notes:
    This striking canvas is an excellent example of Hale Woodruff's late period of painting. Early in his postwar abstraction, Woodruff looked to ancient or primordial subjects outside of Western culture. A wide range of sources is mapped out in his 1952 panel Native Forms from his six-panel series, Art of the Negro, at the Trevor Arnett Library, Clark Atlanta University. Woodruff began incorporating symbols from African art and objects into the idiom of Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s, using abstract shapes found in the forms of Ashanti gold weights or Dogon dwelling doors from Mali. In addition to his well-known Celestial Gate series, Woodruff's interest in such forms continued in his later career, in such paintings as Primordial Landscape and Prehistoric Figurations, both from 1967, and Blue Landscape, 1970. Not seen publicly in fifty years, Primeval Image shows Woodruff's continued evolution as an abstract painter into the 1960s.
  • Condition:
    Please contact the Specialist for the auction to request a condition report.

    Condition reports and additional images are provided as a courtesy and should be used by you to aid in the formation of your own opinion regarding condition. All material is sold subject to Swann's standard Terms and Conditions of Sale as published in our catalogues and posted on our website, and include the following terms: (1) all property is sold "as-is"; and (2) works cannot be returned on the basis of condition.

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October 7, 2025 12:00 PM EDT
New York, NY, US

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