Blocks and strips

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    Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio
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c. 1970
Cotton, polyester, synthetic blends
83 x 80 inches
Collection of
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco museum purchase American Art Trust Fund and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Description

Annie Mae seeks subtle irregularities and asymmetries among otherwise like elements, as in the blue squares of this blocks and strips quilt whose rather mundane first impression yields to the patient viewer thoughtfully revised forms and an immensely sophisticated color sense. (How else to explain the crucial roles here of violet and green, the two secondary colors that contain blue?) 

This is one of ten Gee's Bend quilts to appear on a U.S. postage stamp in 2006.