What Do You See? The Collection of Sidney Rothberg, Part I

In the decade before the present lot was executed, Ben Nicholson visited Greece, which, in turn, served as inspiration for many of his works. In his 2002 exhibition catalogue of the artist’s work, Peter Khoroche recalls that Nicholson made five separate trips to Greece and the Aegean between 1959-1973, the period during which Untitled was produced. Khoroche describes the artist’s late reliefs as “mindscapes” rather than "landscapes...conveying an experience of and awareness, not the representation of something....” Untitled also bears some compositional similarities to works created by Nicholson from the mid-1960s, distinct in their use of brick-color gouache and ink, with each depicting a quasi-architectural subject in a sparse, angular fashion. Whether Untitled is in fact a Greek subject–imparting upon the viewer ”the actual quality of Greece itself”–it ostensibly relates to an identical theme seen in many of the artist’s mixed media works from this period.