Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956)

Spare produced an extraordinary body of realist portraits as well as glamorous portrayals of Hollywood stars, which he painted from existing photographs to create his unusually stylised compositions. The artist referred to these as ‘sidereal’ portraits. The term was used to denote Spare’s unique style, a play on the literal meaning of the term ‘of the stars’, and ‘real from the side.’ The present lot portrays Joan Crawford, an American film and television star, one of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Spare considered film stars as modern Pagan gods, and through his 'sidereal' adaptations he sought to capture their real existence in a spatial, possibly ‘fourth dimension’.