Think that you may own a painting by Clyfford Still? We authenticate, appraise and issue Certificates of Authenticity (COA) and provide consultations for all paintings by Clyfford Still.

 

 

 

Clyfford Still was an American painter of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Still was born in Grandin, North Dakota but spent many of his early years in Spokane, Washington and Bow Island, Canada. Still studied at Spokane University in Washington. Two years later Still enrolled in a graduate program at Washington State University, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Washington State University.

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In 1934, Still participated in a residency program at Yaddo, an artist colony and community in Saratoga Springs, New York. After finding Yaddo to be a positive experience, Still helped to found Nespelem Art Colony, a new art community in Washington. Still worked together with Worth Griffin, establishing the colony by 1937. The Nespelem Art Colony was based around the study of the Native American, Colville Indian Reservation.

 

 

In the late 1930s Still shifted gears and started creating less representational paintings. Instead, Still focused on expressive brushwork and color field compositions, while his many of his contemporaries were continuing to experiment with surrealism.

By 1941 Still decided to move to San Francisco, where he held a teaching position at the California School of Fine Arts. In 1948, Still decided to spend the summer working on his paintings in New York. It was during this time that Still transformed his style of painting and developed his signature aesthetic. Still returned to San Francisco and continued to teach until 1950, but made frequent trips to New York, where he was represented by the galleries of Peggy Guggenheim and Betty Parsons.

 

 

 

By the late 1950s Still decided to move to New York, where he held several solo exhibitions and was surrounded by other Abstract Expressionist artists. While Still was extremely successful in New York, he grew critical of the art scene and decided to move to Maryland, where he spent the last twenty years of his life. After Still’s death all of his paintings that were not in the public domain were controlled by the Clyfford Still Estate and were removed from the art market.

 

It was not until 2004 that the Clyfford Still Estate chose a site to open a Clyfford Still Museum. The new museum is planned to open in Denver, Colorado in the spring of 2010. The collection will contain more than 2,400 works of art, including drawings, prints and paintings. While 94 % of Still’s work will be housed in the museum, the remaining six percent belongs to various private and museum collections.

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