Pace, Stephen.(American, 1918-2010). UNTITLED DRAWING (STUDY FOR "MEREDITH IN MAINE"). Ink on paper, 1977. Signed and dated, lower right. 11 x 13 1/2 inches, 279 x 343 mm. Framed. In excellent condition.
This drawing and the painting to which it is related are illustrated in "Stephen Pace - Maine and Reminiscences 1953-1993," the Catalogue of a 1994 exhibition held at both Maine Coast Artists, Rockport, ME and Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME. Although the catalogue calls this a "prelimary drawing" for the painting, it is a fully finished drawing in its own right, not simply a preparatory sketch.
Stephen Pace enrolled at the Institute of Fine Art in San Miguel Allende, Mexico, with funding provided by the G.I. Bill. After a year south of the border--during which time met and befriended the painter Milton Avery--he decided to go to New York, where he received instruction from Cameron Booth and Morris Kantor at the Art Students League (1948-49). Through Avery, Stephen Pace also came into contact with painters such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. After a trip to Florence in 1950 and a period of study at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris in 1951, Pace resumed his studies in New York, attending classes at Hans Hofmann's school. Hofmann's teachings--especially his practice of creating volume through dynamic planes of color-- helped inspire the direct and vigorous Abstract Expressionist style Stephen Pace employed during the 1950s. D
During this period, Pace participated in group artist shows at institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum. He also had solo exhibitions at the Artists Gallery, the Poindexter Gallery, and the Howard Wise Gallery in New York and at venues in Provincetown, San Francisco, Chicago, and elsewhere. By 1961, his reputation was such that the critic, Thomas B. Hess, deemed him a "brilliant member of the second generation of New York School painters that burst on the scene, in the early 1950s, fully made, as if from the forehead of the Statue of Liberty" (quoted in Martica Sawin, Stephen Pace, 2004).
After 1960, Stephen Pace embraced his rural roots, spending
time in Pennsylvania and then Maine, a region that allowed him to
reconnect with nature. Dividing his time between studios in New York
City and Stonington, Maine, he returned to figural art. It seems likely that this drawing was done on the porch of Pace's own house in Stonington.
