This is a surrealist oil on canvas by John Hultberg titled Exploding Plain. It is dated on a label from the Makler Gallery in Philadelphia attached to the stretcher 1957. The image shows a plain composed of geometric shapes of blues, grays, white, and black with highlights of yellow and orange converging to a vanishing point in the center background where it forms a horizon with a field of black with a series of white dots that form what could be an infinity sign, but also resembles an analemma (a diagram showing the position of a star or other celestial object in the sky as seen from a fixed location). I favor the latter interpretation, as the asymmetry of the pattern is quite consistent with the solar analemma seen from Earth. There is a second portion of a similar figure above and to the right of the first, but it is truncated. In any case, it gives a sense of space and time to the image, with a sense of other worldliness. A very dramatic image that fits a description of his work as 'Abstract Realism'. The timing of the painting is intriguing in that Sputnik launched in 1957 and that transformed society into seriously considering the potential (and threat) of space. What had once been the province of science fiction was becoming science fact. The painting is in excellent condition with no damage or paint loss. I cannot find a signature, but stylistically there is no doubt it is by Hultberg as confirmed by the gallery labels. It is in its original frame which measures 28 x 18 Inches. A great midcentury piece and typical of Hultberg's work from this time period.

John Hultberg (1922-2005) He was born in Berkeley, California. He served in the Navy in World War II. After the war he began his serious artistic studies as a beneficiary of the GI Bill. Initially he studied at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), where his teachers included the abstract expressionist artists Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. Among his classmates were Richard Diebenkorn (who Hultman considered a mentor) and George Stillman. In 1948, Hultberg and Stillman collaborated on a portfolio of lithographs titled "Drawings". This portfolio has subsequently been regarded as a landmark in Abstract Expressionist printmaking. He won first prize at the Corcoran Gallery of Art Biennial. In 1955, Time magazine declared him the "latest darling of modern art." Hultman, Diebenkorn, and Stillman along with James Budd Dixon, Walter Kuhlman, and Frank Lobdellwere known as "The Sausalito Six". He moved to New York and was associated with the Abstract Expressionists, although he also developed a series of works characterized by Surrealist invented landscapes with "linear perspectives and angular shapes that Bob Keyes dubbed Abstract Realism in Hultberg's obituary. He was prolific and his work is widely held in most major collections in the United States and abroad. The Smithsonian American Art Museum alone holds 34 works. Wolfgang Saxon states in Hultberg's obituary in the New York Times, "Mr. Hultberg made a name for himself in the 1950s with powerful landscapes, fractured into slabs under ominous horizons; multiplicities of bizarre, huddled shapes; and dense, semiabstract urban wastelands dappled with harsh brilliance and vague human touches. Their air of mystery and forceful use of color earned him awards at exhibitions that began in the 1950s and continued for five decades."