Sand Storm

Artist Agnes Pelton (1881 - 1961)

Date1932

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions30 1/4 × 22 in. (76.8 × 55.9 cm)
Framed: 37 3/4 × 29 3/4 × 2 1/2 in.

ClassificationsPainting

Credit LineCrystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2012.504

Signedl.r.: Pelton 1932

Accession number 2012.504

On View

Not on view

ProvenanceMr. Buell Hammett [1895-1945] and Mrs. Buell Hammett, Santa Barbara, CA, by 1943; (Martin Diamond Fine Arts, New York, NY); to Private Collection, by 1990; to (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, NY); purchased by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, 2012
Label TextA member of the Transcendental Painting Group founded in New Mexico in the 1930s, Agnes Pelton pursued spiritual and philosophical meanings through abstraction based in nature. According to its manifesto, the group aimed “to carry painting beyond the appearance of the physical world, through new concepts of space, color, light and design, to imaginative realms that are idealistic and spiritual.”

Pelton painted Sand Storm shortly after moving to the small desert town of Cathedral City, California. The rhythmic shapes of the painting suggest a mystical quality to nature, as experienced through an intense weather event.
Inscribedverso: Sand Storm / Agnes Pelton / 1932