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Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: George Condo, Nude with Towel, 2007

George Condo

Nude with Towel, 2007
pencil on paper
35 x 26 1/2 in
88.9 x 67.3 cm
Nude with Towel (2007) depicts a kneeling woman with a necklace around her throat, her hands clasping a towel that winds around her calf. Wide-eyed, the woman's gaze is directed...
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Nude with Towel (2007) depicts a kneeling woman with a necklace around her throat, her hands clasping a towel that winds around her calf. Wide-eyed, the woman's gaze is directed towards the viewer. The image underscores the centrality of the figure to Condo's practice; the nude's pose, gaze, and accompanying props all hint at a stage-like setting that demonstrates the themes of artifice and theatricality that underpin his practice. Condo reserves the most detail for the nude's face, highlighting her beauty, expression, and the slight tilt of her head. The work marvelously emphasizes the artist's ability to spark our imagination through his own unique visual vocabulary, leaving us to imagine the story the story that is being told through the figure of the nude.

A prolific painter known for his distinctive portraits, George Condo reportedly remarked, "Drawing is visual thinking... What do you do for the whole day, wait for the paint to dry?" Over the course of his three decade career, Condo has produced a significant body of drawings that accompany his celebrated oil paintings. Scholar and writer Margrit Brehm noted that the artist himself attributed great importance to his drawings, which serve as an alternative window into his practice, and reveal developments in subject matter, composition, and form. According to Brehm, they represent a "pictorial cosmos which is more diverse and subversive than the paintings would have us assume."

Best known for his imaginative portraits of people and characters, George Condo is credited for inspiring a revival of interest in painting and portraiture. His works have shocked and surprised viewers over his nearly four-decade career, through his idiosyncratic style that manages to deliver humor and horror in turn. His paintings have earned acclaim and praise for their ability to put the contemporary present in dialogue with references to Masters, such as Picasso, Goya, and Velázquez. Using the term "Artificial Realism", the artist once described his practice as the "realistic representation of that which is artificial". His works can be found in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Broad Foundation, Los Angeles, and other institutions worldwide. He has also been the subject of major surveys and retrospectives, which have been shown in institutions such as the New Museum, New York, the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

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Provenance

Galerie Andrea Caratsch, St. Moritz (acquired directly from the artist's studio)

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