Alyce Frank, Untitled (Flowering Trees)
Alyce Frank
1932 - 2024
Untitled (Flowering Trees)
oil on linen
inscribed verso: Alyce
15 3/8 x 19 1/2 in. (39.1 x 49.5 cm.), frame: 23 3/8 x 27 3/8 x 1 in. (59.4 x 69.5 x 2.5 cm.)
The Artist, ca. 1985
Private Collection, New Mexico
Alyce Frank didn't begin painting until she was about forty, after an unlikely early path — university at fifteen, a decade producing educational films in Los Angeles with her husband, Larry — led the couple to resettle in Taos, New Mexico, in 1962. The high desert landscape became her lifelong subject, and self-described "Taos Expressionism" her idiom: canvases built over a signature red underpainting, worked outdoors and rendered in a saturated, Fauvist-inflected palette that favors emotional truth over topography. Van Gogh, the Fauvists, and a 1983 master class with Richard Diebenkorn all left their mark, as did a decades-long painting partnership with fellow artist Barbara Zaring.
Over roughly twenty-six years, Frank completed more than six hundred canvases — chiefly large landscapes, along with nearly a hundred portraits of Taos friends and family. Her 1996 painting The Upper Falls at Yosemite later traveled in a major museum exhibition on the art of Yosemite, and her work was collected in the monograph The Magical Realism of Alyce Frank. She died in January 2024, just short of ninety-two, leaving a body of work still prized for its fearless color and unmistakable hand.
Condition
A condition report for this lot is available upon request (please include the lot number in your request) and is provided by Santa Fe Art Auction as a courtesy and convenience for potential buyers.
Alyce Frank
1932 - 2024
Untitled (Flowering Trees)
oil on linen
inscribed verso: Alyce
15 3/8 x 19 1/2 in. (39.1 x 49.5 cm.), frame: 23 3/8 x 27 3/8 x 1 in. (59.4 x 69.5 x 2.5 cm.)
The Artist, ca. 1985
Private Collection, New Mexico
Alyce Frank didn't begin painting until she was about forty, after an unlikely early path — university at fifteen, a decade producing educational films in Los Angeles with her husband, Larry — led the couple to resettle in Taos, New Mexico, in 1962. The high desert landscape became her lifelong subject, and self-described "Taos Expressionism" her idiom: canvases built over a signature red underpainting, worked outdoors and rendered in a saturated, Fauvist-inflected palette that favors emotional truth over topography. Van Gogh, the Fauvists, and a 1983 master class with Richard Diebenkorn all left their mark, as did a decades-long painting partnership with fellow artist Barbara Zaring.
Over roughly twenty-six years, Frank completed more than six hundred canvases — chiefly large landscapes, along with nearly a hundred portraits of Taos friends and family. Her 1996 painting The Upper Falls at Yosemite later traveled in a major museum exhibition on the art of Yosemite, and her work was collected in the monograph The Magical Realism of Alyce Frank. She died in January 2024, just short of ninety-two, leaving a body of work still prized for its fearless color and unmistakable hand.
Condition
A condition report for this lot is available upon request (please include the lot number in your request) and is provided by Santa Fe Art Auction as a courtesy and convenience for potential buyers.
