Max Cole
Untitled #2, 2021
etching
22.5 x 30 inches (unframed), edition 11/20
opening bid: $2,500
buy it now: $4,500
Over the course of nearly six decades, Max Cole has refined a visual language into a series of vertical and horizontal lines and a restrained palette of gray, black, and white. As Cole says, “The line is the most universal and abstract art element. The result is quiet, inward, and meditative, transcending the physical.” A stunning example of her quiet, meditative practice, this etching is one of the rare few not already in a private or institutional collection from this period in Cole’s career.
Born in Kansas in 1937, Max Cole received her BA in 1961 from Fort Hays State University and her MFA in 1964 from University of Arizona. She developed as an artist in Los Angeles from 1964–1978, and then moved to New York City, where she lived until 2002. She worked for many years in the Catskills, then in the Sierra foothills of northern California; she now lives and works in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Panza di Biumo Collection, Varese, Italy; and the Museums of Moderner Kunst in Otterndorf, Wuppertal, Ingolstadt, Cologne, and Munich, Germany.
Cole is the recipient of numerous honors and grants, including a Pollock/Krasner Foundation Artist’s Grant, and a Visual Artists Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has been an Artist in Residence at both the Roswell Museum and Art Center (NM), and The Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation (CT).
Work courtesy of the artist and Charlotte Jackson Fine Arts, Santa Fe.
