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Tanavoli, Parviz - Hand

(Brooch/Pendant), 1976

A silver pendant of a downward hand inlayed with turquoise stones in the gridded circle of the palm.

This object belongs to a small collection of jewelry by Tanavoli that was owned and worn by Abby Grey, who avidly collected his work; she held the jewelry back from her large 1975 gift to the Grey Art Gallery. Following her death in 1983, it entered the NYU Art Collection by bequest. This turquoise-adorned brooch/pendant represents the severed hand of Hazrat Abbas, an early Shiite warrior who sought in the heat of battle to fetch water from the Euphrates and was killed by the enemy.

Visual Description:

A silver pendant of a hand-like shape is placed upright on four fingers; the thumb is signficantly smaller and pointy. The silver is slightly tarnished with faint scratches throughout. In the palm of the hand, there is a circular, indented grid that resembles a waffle-like shape. In the squares of this uniform grid, there are 13 small turquoise beads embedded into the sculpture, organized in a square formation, with four extra beads adjacent to the middle.

Medium
Silver and turquoise
Dimensions
2.5 by 2.25 by 0.25 inches
Credit Line
Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection
Donor
Abby Weed Grey Bequest
Object ID
G1983.29

Heilmann, Mary - Rompecabeza Uno

2000

Two wooden panels are painted with blob-like organic shapes of bright colors

A Californian who has lived in New York since 1968, Mary Heilmann creates abstractions that frequently evoke her home state’s coastal landscape in their vivid colors, organic shapes, and, at times, obliquely referential imagery. Her artworks are as intuitive in their inception as they are precise in their internal logic, conveying dynamic relationships between the edges of their underlying supports, painted lines that converge at all angles, and forms that spread fluidly across their surfaces. Heilmann originally focused on sculpture and ceramics as a young artist, and she has retained physicality as a key component in her longstanding painting practice, often employing shaped canvases or multiple panels.

Visual Description:

Colorful painting that uses two rectangular weathered wooden panels as the canvas. They are mounted vertically on a wall, one above the other with a couple inches in between them. Both panel is made up of three vertical planks side by side. Both panels depict blob-like organic shapes of varying colors. On the top panel, in the top left corner is a blue rounded shape extending halfway across the left plank and curves down back to the left around half way down the plank. To the right, a bright yellow distorted oval shape takes up most of the upper section of the panel, spanning across all three planks and two thirds of the way down the panel. A small sliver of neon green sits in the top right corner of the panel. A large bright red shape takes the lower left corner and extends right across two planks. A lighter blue circular form completes the lower right corner. The bottom panel has a black background with a large light yellow-green drip shape extending downward from the top left third of the panel, across half the top, and reaches almost down to the bottom. In the small space below, the bottom left corner is a blue shape behind the drip. To the right is a larger darker yellow warped triangle that spans through the other two planks. In the bottom right corner is a small sliver of bright green. There are visible nail holes near the center point of all 6 planks.

Medium
Acrylic on wood panel
Dimensions
14.5 by 8.5 by 3 inches
Donor
Gift of the Cottrell-Lovett Collection
Credit Line
Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection (c) Mary Heilmann
Object ID
2021.5.18
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