Untitled

Although born in Iran, Manoucher Yektai settled in New York from 1948, where he was exposed to the gestural Abstract Expressionist style that was adopted by established artists Willem de Kooning, Sam Francis and Jackson Pollock. Yektai's paintings of the 1950s and 1960s, much inspired by the scene he discovered revealed deeply worked surfaces alternating between thick and thin impasto as well as white and colour. The present still-life painting is a captivating and delightful example from 1967 that adopts the maturity and skill of the Abstract Expressionist visual lexicon that has established him as an international rather than Iranian artist. In the present work, Yektai re-examines the deep-rooted artistic tradition of still-life in a semi-abstract form. It is clear within the heavy brushstrokes and impasto that Yektai's primary aim was to highlight the depth of the material he used while simultaneously highlighting the notion of space within the canvas. The splashing colours and highly intriguing texture make this charming work one of the most typical and captivating compositions in Yektai's oeuvre.