FULL SPECTRUM 2012 | AUCTION LOT 9

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Terry St. John 
Model #6, 2011
Ink on paper
19 ¾ × 15 inches
Courtesy of Dolby Chadwick Gallery

Retail value: $7,800

Terry St. John is best known for his figurative paintings that reflect both the Bay Area Figurative Movement and the Californian Society of Six. However, St. John, who trained under Richard Diebenkorn and James Weeks in the 1960s, has a long history of drawing, especially the female nude, and has commented that they allowed himto develop germinal ideas about space, composition, form, and tonal values.” St. John shows us why life drawing remains relevant today: formulaic approaches to art-making are surrendered as the artist encounters living flesh and veracity bows to something more timeless.

Model #6 is a beautiful example of what happens when St. John works in black and white in order to focus on the figure and the way it occupies space. The nude figure is composed of strong geometric forms and gestural marks that demonstrate the artist’s hand. The more ambiguous surrounding objects exist in that same indefinable space seen in many of his paintings. According to critic Peter Campion, “The props and furniture in St. John’s nudes are never merely props and furniture. They tend to hover on the line between identifiable objects and abstract shapes.... As they simultaneously invite and elude interpretation, such shapes help to create the sense that imagination and reality have woven together in these spaces.” 

Chiara imbued the image with psychological tension. The abstraction of the face draws the viewer’s focus to the woman’s body; her unusual, far-from-classical pose lends a slightly voyeuristic quality, although the study is physically revealing without being sexually explicit. Intriguingly, the model stares away from the artist and the viewer, thus inviting rather than challenging their gaze. 

Terry St. John was born in Sacramento, California, in 1934. He received his BA from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1958 and his MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco, in 1966. From 1970 until 1990, St. John was a curator of modern painting at the Oakland Museum of California, after which he served for eight years as chair of the art department at the Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. His art can be found in the permanent collections of the Oakland Museum of California; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; the Masur Museum, Monroe, Louisiana; and the San Jose Museum of Art, among others.

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