Lynda Benglis (b. 1941) Shankh, 1980 Wire mesh, plaster, gesso, oil-based size, and gold leaf 41 x 16 x 13 inches (104.1 x 40.6 x 33.0 cm) (overall) PROVENANCE: Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; Private collection, 1981; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; Private collection, Newark, New Jersey. EXHIBITED: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, "Developments in Recent Sculpture," July 22–September 27, 1981. LITERATURE: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Developments in Recent Sculpture, exhibition catalogue, 1981, p. 27, 29, illustrated; R. Pincus-Witten, "Entries: Style Shucks," Arts Magazine 56, no. 2, New York, October 1981, p. 96, illustrated; Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, Massachusetts, Lynda Benglis, exhibition catalogue, 2018, p. 74, illustrated; L. Benglis, A. Bonacina, N. Lawrence, B. Obler, Lynda Benglis, New York, 2022, p. 49, illustrated. Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, Massachusetts, Hanne Friis/Lynda Benglis, exhibition catalogue, 2024, p. 110, illustrated. NOTE: Please note this lot is located at our New York City office. The buyer is responsible for arranging pickup or shipping from this location. "The last of Benglis's gold, glamor queen torsos, the "Chicago Caryatids" of 1979, became wildly contorted, with sinuous, crinkled surfaces. After completing them, Benglis visited Crete and stopped in Paris on the way home, where she saw Mer Egée, Grèce des Isles, a major exhibition of Aegean art at the Louvre, from which she recalled a fragment of a funeral stele, crowned with a palmette motif. Inspired by this object and interested in complicating the reflexivity of her surfaces even further, she began to pleat the screening of her armatures and fan them open into various forms. Benglis developed a new morphology: the lyrical gold images that followed recall wings, birds, shells, flowing shrouds, drapery and flowers. Al are seemingly weightless visions, imbued with a sense of fleeting, fanciful movement and rococo fashion." Lynda Benglis: Dual Natures (exhibition catalogue)." Text by Susan Krane. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1990, p. 50. HID12401132022 © 2024 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved www.HA.com/TexasAuctioneerLicenseNotice