Keith Sonnier
(Louisiana/New York, 1941-2020)

"Untitled (Sculpture Study)", 1986

marker on paper
initialed "K.S." and dated lower right, and labels from "Drawn from New Orleans: Twentieth-Century Works from Private Collections" en verso.
Matted, glazed and framed.
sheet 9-1/4" x 7-1/4", framed 17" x 13"

Provenance: Previously in the collection of Mark Bercier, New Orleans, Louisiana; Estate of Howell Dean Coe III, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Exhibited: "Drawn from New Orleans: Twentieth-Century Works from Private Collections", Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, April 24-June 30, 2007.

Notes: Keith Sonnier grew up in the Cajun community of Mamou, part of Evangeline Parish in south central Louisiana. Raised in a Catholic, French-speaking home, his father owned a hardware store, and his mother was a florist and local singer whom Sonnier described as "very devout and also very eccentric." After graduation in 1963 from University of Southwestern Louisiana, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, he studied painting in Paris, and then enrolled at Rutgers University, where he studied with contemporary artists Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Morris. Sonnier achieved early recognition from the New York art scene during the late 1960s, including exhibiting at the Whitney Museum of Art.
Based on a Cajun expression "Ba-O-Ba" meaning "color bath" or "light bath", Sonnier combined colored neon and reflective glass shapes into abstract sculptures. Sonnier infused his sculptures with a sense of poetry in contrast to the seriousness of post-Minimal art.

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