I purchased this and a few other drawings by Edwin Kosarek from a dealer who had purchased a good number of them plus a journal kept by Kosarek, which provided a little biographical information. What I know is that he was from New Jersey (b. 1929) but spent a good part of the 1950s in Mexico, after which he briefly attended Cooper Union. He was gay, and estranged from his family, and, it seems increasingly mentally ill, with not much record of him after the 1950s.
I think his drawings were wonderful, and a number of them, including this one, remind/ed me a bit of the incredible work of the visionary self taught artist Martin Ramirez (reference image included in photos) which, as yet undiscovered, Kosarek obviously would not have known. I know that Kosarek did a series of portraits of men confined inside various sorts of structures and so might take this as a self portrait of sorts, though certainly it can be read as a portrayal of a classical sculpture full of life trapped forever inside a museum vitrine--and with a bit of a jack-in-the-box feel too, as if about to spring up and blow the roof off!
Drawing: graphic on tan card, 5 1/16" x 4" tape mounted to thin white paper with perforated edges, 11" x 8 1/2". Very good condition.
