Signed Natkin,lower left

Provenance: Private Collection,Scottsdale,Arizona acquired from Douglas Drake Gallery in 1987 This painting by Robert Natkin is part of the Bath-Apollo Series and is noted on verso “Gate of Shrine (for Nathan Kolodner)”.  Nathan Kolodner was the director of the Andre Emmerich Gallery in New York.  He used his experience as an art dealer and director of the Andre Emmerich Gallery in Manhattan to organize an art auction at Sotheby's. It was the first event to raise one million dollars to help sufferers of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.  Mr. Kolodner died of AIDS-related causes in 1989. The seemingly limited palette of Natkin’s Bath paintings (from 1974 and entirely black and white),liberated the artist,allowing him to concentrate more than ever on the skin of the canvas. Natkin subsequently began introducing more obvious hue into the Bath canvases; hence the emergence of the Color Bath paintings. The series continued to evolve as Natkin began to organize the diaphanous,textural surfaces of the Bath and Color Bath paintings into subtly interwoven,vertically-organized bands. The resulting canvases,with their curtain-like folds and gauzy ripples,belong to the Bath Apollo series.  This painting is from that series of work from 1976.