George Segal

 

 

 

Woman in Robe #3, 1981

pastel on paper

18 x 12 in. (45.72 x 30.48 cm)

Museum Purchase

© George Segal/ Licensed by VAGA, New York

 

 

 

George Segal (American, b. 1924)

Trained first as an abstract painter and typically grouped with the earliest core of Pop artists, George Segal found “self-identification in his expressionistically manipulated white plaster figures whose postures and attitudes were film-stopped in everyday surroundings filled with real-life props.” At the same time, he remained seduced by what he called the “brilliant color and juiciness” of pastel drawings. The University Art Museum’s exhibition, George Segal Pastels 1957–1965, was the first to unveil the previously private drawings made during Segal’s rise to fame as a sculptor. The show premiered at California State University, Long Beach, from October 17 to November 6, 1977, after which it traveled to museums in San Diego, Seattle, and Boise. Over the years, the Museum maintained its longstanding relationship with the artist, inviting him to give the Zeitlin Lecture in 1984 and exhibiting his remarkable black-and-white photographs for the first time anywhere in 1986. Woman in Robe #3 was purchased on the occasion of his Zeitlin Lecture. While more opulent and graphically refined, it nevertheless recalls the stunning energy of his early work and the Museum’s landmark 1977 exhibition and catalogue.