AVEL DE KNIGHT (1923 - 1995) Three drawings.

AVEL DE KNIGHT (1923 - 1995)Three drawings. Untitled (Two Young Men in Bed, Above, 062), pencil on cream vellum. 9x13 inches, 25x33 cm * Untitled (Two Young Men in Bed, Facing, 025), pencil on cream vellum. approximately 6½x6 inches, 16½x15 cm * Untitled (Two Young Men, 086), charcoal and graphite on thin cream wove paper. 10x7½ inches, 26½x19 cm. Circa 1940s.Provenance: Julien Outin, Paris; private collection, Virginia. These drawings were acquired from the estate of his close friend, the French artist Julien Outin (1923-2005).

Raised in New York City by Caribbean parents, Avel de Knight studied art through his teenage years and high school. After enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II, he continued his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and the Académie Julian in Paris with other artists such as Herbert Gentry and Romare Bearden. Once he returned to the United States in the 1960s, he taught at the Art Students League of New York. At this time, de Knight began his best-known Mirage series where he visually recorded his appreciation for the power and wisdom of the collective unconscious through his art. His work is found in numerous museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, National Academy of Design, New York, Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York, the Chrysler Museum of Art in Virginia, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York and the Robert Hull Fleming Museum in Vermont.