Guy Danella (American, 1928-2006), Psyche Cycle #1

Lot Details & Additional Photographs

Oil on canvas, 1958, signed and inscribed to top stretcher, framed.

Stretcher size 20 x 20 in.; Frame dimensions 20 3/4 x 20 3/4 in.

Private Collection, Raleigh, North Carolina

From the estate of the artist
Leland Little Auction, December 5, 2014, Lot 427
Acquired from the above

Danella painted this work as a Modernist homage to the first panel, "Cupid in Flight is Struck by the Beauty of Psyche," of the monumental 1908 decorative ensemble of Maurice Denis, The Story of Psyche cycle housed at The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Danella began his early studies in Utica at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute. By the age of sixteen, in 1944, he had moved to NYC and enrolled at the Art Students League. While in NYC he befriended Alfred Stieglitz and John Marin. He later met and impressed Josef Albers, whose geometric abstractions and color studies greatly influenced Danella during the period this painting was completed. Danella went on to influence his own cadre of students, never setting the brush down himself.

Foxing to canvas verso;