Provenance

Estate of the Artist

Private Collection, Paris

Exhibitions and literature

America 1976: a Bicentennial Exhibition Sponsored by the United States Department of the Interior, 1976-8, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge; Minneapolis Museum of Art; Milwaukee Art Center; Fort Worth Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Brooklyn Museum; catalogue by Robert Rosenblum, Neil Welliver, John Ashbery and Richard Howard, No. 25, reproduced

p. 93 (“Simplified into schematic form, the painting represents the power equipment and structures at Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, the first great multiple purpose dam built by the Bureau of Reclamation”, p. 79)

Ralston Crawford, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, traveling to the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; the Portland Art Museum, Oregon; and the Akron Art Museum, Ohio, 1985-6, catalogue by Barbara Haskell, color plate No. 143, p. 130

Ralston Crawford, Torn Signs, Vilcek Foundation, New York, 2019, texts by William Agee, John Crawford, Rick Kinsel and Emily Schuchardt Navratil, reproduced in color Fig 10, p. 49 and also p. 41, among a selection showing “the themes of Crawford’s work before and after World War II”.

 

Hoover Dam, dating from 1975 during the years when Crawford was painting primarily abstract compositions, including some of his most dynamic, is special because it is reminiscent of his pre-war industrial subjects and recapitulates themes and manners of his earlier Precisionist style. It is considered one of his most important late works, and the late works as a group are considered in many ways Crawford’s finest achievement.