A wonderful encaustic and carved wood massive sculpture and painting by the noted French artist Philippe Cognee. The roughly carved wood relief, features a canvas in the center. Monogrammed lower left P.C. 87 and signed on the rear.
Provenance Private Collection, purchased from Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, Illinois. Previously featured in an Expressionist paintings and carved reliefs at the Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago.
From Google;
Cognee’s first one-man exhibition in the United States, the show featured multidimensional and multi-media work. Philippe Cognée is a recognized and celebrated French artist born in 1957 in Nantes, France where he still lives and works. He graduated as a Diplôme National Supérieur d’Arts Plastiques, École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, France and won the prize of Rome in 1991.
He teaches at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts School in Paris. This work is in the Neo Expressionist style made popular in the 1980’s by Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria and Mimmo Paladino the Transavanguardia Philippe Cognee grew up in Benin, Africa, where his father taught returning to France in 1974. He appeared on the art scene at the beginning of the eighties with his Art Brut carvings. He is inspired by the photograph particularly polaroid photo images that he then paints with encaustic painting made with beeswax, encaustic and pigments. He then uses a plastic film to cover the canvas, and an iron to melt the wax that by spreading on the support (canvas or wood) and creates a blurring effect that is the stylistic signature of the artist. He is represented by the prestigious Daniel Templon Gallery, they exhibited Andy Warhol, Arman, Roy Lichtenstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Jim Dine, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel and Kehinde Wiley. Cognee won the Villa Médicis prize, the Prix de Rome and was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp. He was awarded Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.