“Dance Around Crystal Mountain,” Remarkable Art Deco Painting with Nudes, 1945

Perhaps the most remarkable of all the crystal paintings made by Milton Bond in the 1940s, this depiction of beautiful nude figures, male and female, forming a symmetrical circle around a glowing crystal mountain, is a vivid illustration of Bond’s eccentric, mysterious view of the universe. Bond was an important painter who worked for the Munsell Color Company and developed a system to describe colors on a scientific scale. Later he taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and became fascinated with carborundum crystals, introducing them in a stylized, vividly-colored form to his paintings. A series of his works was exhibited at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester. This painting is oil on canvas.