936 - Monogrammist ST, Young Lady with Two Clowns, expressive oil painting in strong colours, 1967

Monogrammist ST, Young Lady with Two Clowns, expressive oil painting in strong colours, 1967 Oil on canvas, monogrammed and dated 67 lower right. Against a ground broken in pink, green and blue a female figure stands frontally with a blue cap and bared upper body, a red and white striped cloth around her hips; she is flanked by two clown figures, the left of which wears a broad-brimmed hat. The paint applied thickly and in broad strokes, the contours reinforced in yellow, red and blue. Age-appropriate good condition. Image 83 x 67.5 cm (HxW). Circus, ring and clown are among the great pictorial themes of modernism: from Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso through Georges Rouault to Max Beckmann, the world of performers served as a parable of role-play, mask and transience. The impasto handling built up from pure colours with reinforced contours stands in the tradition of the expressive figurative painting of the post-war decades, which retained a broad following alongside abstract art in the 1960s.