Jose Marmol
"An American Marriage"
Hand signed and dated
Painted bronze
Provenance: Allan Stone Gallery, New York.
It came with an inlaid art deco box also signed Marmol. I cannot find any conclusive biography of the artist.
Allan Stone (1932–2006) was a legendary American art dealer, collector, and leading authority on Abstract Expressionism. In 1960, he founded the Allan Stone Gallery where he became renowned for his early advocacy of preeminent 20th-century artists. He championed artists such as John Chamberlain, Joseph Cornell, Willem de Kooning, Richard Estes, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, Eva Hesse, Franz Kline, Yasuhide Kobashi, Wayne Thiebaud, and Jack Whitten. He was also known for his zealous and eclectic approach to art collecting, amassing a collection that spanned painting, sculpture, assemblage, collage, folk art, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, furniture, mechanical parts, signs, and bugatti cars. At the time of his death, he had the largest collection of African and Oceanic art in private hands. His clientele included Robert Mallary, John Chamberlain, and Elaine de Kooning, During the gallery's first decade Stone showed established luminaries such as Willem de Kooning, César, Franz Kline, John Chamberlain, Barnett Newman, and Alfred Leslie. He gave first or early shows to Arman, Robert Arneson, Richard Estes, Dorothy Grebenak,Eva Hesse, Robert Ryman, Wayne Thiebaud, and Jack Whitten.
The Allan Stone Gallery was one of the few that would see artists and their work without an appointment—a vital lifeline for the inexperienced and unconnected. It was also unconventional in its frequent showings of unknown woman artists and artists of color, such as Eva Hesse, Gerald Jackson, Jack Whitten, Elizabeth King, Sue Miller, Sylvia Lark, Kazuko Inoue, Diana Moore, Oliver Lee Jackson, Mary Lovelace O'Neal and Lorraine Shemesh. Other young artists that Stone championed include Mundy Hepburn, Richard Hickam, James Havard, David Beck, James Grashow, Dennis Clive, and Robert Baribeau. This eclectic mix of talent is exemplified by the impressive roster of contemporary American artists the gallery exhibited in the 1962 Contemporary American Art show at the New York Coliseum. Works by the foremost figures in American art, including Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Robert Mallary, and Andy Warhol, hung alongside works by artists that were relatively unknown at the time such as George Deem, Thomas Downing, Stephen Durkee, Charles Ginnever, Hans Haacke, John Kacere, Bernard Langlais, Robert S. Neuman, and Wayne Thiebaud. His reputation as a tastemaker, along with his instincts, passion, and appreciation of unconventional talent garnered him a large following of collectors. He is responsible for curating some of the most extraordinary private collections of art in existence today.
