81

Mabel Alvarez

1891-1985, Los Angeles, CA

Still life with fruit and a white footed bowl

Oil on canvas
Signed lower right: Alvarez
16" H x 20" W

  • Notes: Born in 1891 on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, Mabel Alvarez was a woman who achieved early recognition as a talented artist. After relocating to California with her family at the age of fifteen, Alvarez began her artistic studies at Los Angeles High School. Under the tutelage of James Edwin McBurney, Alvarez assisted in the production of murals for the Panama-California Exposition that was held in San Diego in 1915. By her early twenties, Alvarez was praised for producing mural designs that were described as "half realistic and half idealistic and wholly out of the ordinary." While Alvarez received high praise for her work in the style of California Impressionism, she instead chose to develop a style that was decidedly Modernist and uniquely her own. She became a member of the California Art Club, and won an honorable mention for her debut exhibition with the organization. Alvarez later became a student under the highly regarded artist Stanton Macdonald-Wright who is now known as the co-founder of the Synchromism movement.

    Throughout her career, Alvarez made significant contributions to the development of California Modernism with her portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. Alvarez painted until her sixties and seventies before her death on March 13, 1985 at the age of ninety-three.
  • Condition: Visual: Stretcher bar creases visible in raking light. Vertical lines of craquelure along the left and right edges. Skinning to the upper left of the bowl. A nickel-sized pressure mark with attendant surface scuffing in the red background, to the right of the bowl. A pea-sized, shallow pressure mark in the foreground apple in the bowl. A pair of additional pressure marks, each approximately pinhead-sized, near the upper left corner.

    Blacklight: No evidence of restoration. Difficult to read under heavy varnish.

    Frame: 21.25" H x 25.5" W x 2" D

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May 10, 2022 12:00 PM PDT
Monrovia, CA, US

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