African American Art
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Nigel Freeman
Vice President & Director, African American Art
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Early 20th Century & Harlem Renaissance
1
Grafton tyler brown (1841 - 1918)
Untitled (Sailboat on a Mountain Lake).
Oil on linen canvas, 1891. 305x457 mm; 12x18 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
This charming scene is an example of the early Western landscapes of Grafton Tyler Brown. Born in Harrisburg, PA to a family of freed slaves from Maryland, Brown's family moved to San Francisco in 1855. There Brown began working for the lithography firm of Kuchel & Dresel, specializing in drawing maps and bird's-eye views of cities and towns in Nevada and California. After the owners' death, Brown purchased the firm, renaming it G.T. Brown & Co., but he then sold the business in 1879 in order to devote his time to painting.
Brown moved to Victoria, BC, joining the Canadian government's geological survey of the Cascade Mountains in 1883. The following year he moved again, this time to Washington state, where he frequently painted Mt. Rainier. From 1886 to 1889, the artist had a studio and home in Portland, OR, where he was a member of the Portland Art Club. But by 1892, Brown was on the move again, relocating to St. Paul, MN, where he remained until his death in 1918. Today, his prized landscapes are found in institutional collections including the Smithsonian American Museum of Art and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC.
Provenance: private collection, Maryland, acquired at Clars Auction Gallery, April 17, 2016.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
2
Henry ossawa tanner (1859 - 1937)
Gate of Tangier.
Etching, circa 1910. 121x89 mm; 4¾x3½ inches, full margins. A posthumous printing.
A very good, dark impression, richly inked with dark edges.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; by descent, private collection, Paris; private collection.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
3
Henry ossawa tanner (1859 - 1937)
Mosque, Tangier.
Etching, circa 1912-14. 175x238 mm; 6 ⅞x9 ⅜ inches, full margins. A posthumous printing.
A very good, dark impression, richly inked with dark edges.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; by descent, private collection, Paris; private collection.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
4
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Mrs. Turner, Lenox, Mass.
Silver print, 1905. 178x140 mm; 7x5½ inches. Signed and numbered I and 70/75 in pencil on the mount. Printed and published by Richard Berson and Graphics International Ltd., Washington, DC in 1974. From Eighteen Photographs.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
5
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
The VanDerZee Men, Lenox, Mass.
Silver print, 1908. 160x127 mm; 6 ⅜x5 inches. Signed and numbered III and 70/75 in pencil on the mount. Printed and published by Richard Berson and Graphics International Ltd., Washington, DC in 1974. From Eighteen Photographs.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
6
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Marcus Garvey and Garvey Militia, Harlem.
Silver print 1924. 247x196 mm; 9¾x7¾ inches. Signed, numbered VII and 70/75 in pencil on the mount. From Eighteen Photographs.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
7
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Nude, Harlem.
Silver print, 1923. 241x191 mm; 9½x7½ inches. Numbered 82/250 in pencil, on the verso. Posthumous printing, with the estate’s blind stamp, lower right.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
8
James a. porter (1905 - 1970)
Untitled (Male Nude).
Charcoal on cream laid paper, 1925. 635x483 mm; 25x19 inches. Signed and dated "Oct. '25" in charcoal, lower right recto. With an unfinished figure drawing on the verso.
James A. Porter drew this academic figure study as an undergraduate student at Howard University. Porter entered Howard's School of Applied Sciences on an art scholarship in the fall of 1923, studied under the tutelage of James V. Herring, the founder of the university's new art department, and graduated in 1927.
Provenance: the artist; Dorothy Porter Walker; Constance Porter Uzelac; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
9
John harold devon robinson (1895 - 1970)
Untitled (Brooklyn Bridge).
Oil on linen canvas, 1925. 508x406 mm; 20x16 inches. Initialed and dated in oil, lower right.
This canvas is a very scarce painting by John Harold Devon or J. H. D. Robinson, whom little is known about today, but was fairly active during the Harlem Renaissance in New York. He exhibited paintings in two significant exhibitions of the 1930s - Exhibition of the Work of Negro Artists, Harmon Foundation, New York in February of 1931, and Paintings and Sculpture by American Negro Artists,the Renaissance Society, the University of Chicago in December of 1936. According to a brief biography found in the Negro Statistical Bulletin of 1935, issued by the Department of Commerce, Robinson studied at the Brooklyn Art School, the Art Students League under Thomas Hart Benton, New York University and the College Art Association. The biography adds that he painted four canvases under the P.W.A.P, and also exhibited at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library and the Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York in 1934.
Provenance: private collection, Pennsylvania; the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, October 4, 2018.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
10
Aaron douglas (1899 - 1979)
Head of Boy (Portrait of Langston Hughes).
Woodcut on cream laid paper, circa 1926. 120x102 mm; 4¾x4 inches, 1/4 to 3/4- inch margins. Signed, titled and dated “1957” in pencil, lower margin. A later printing by the artist at Fisk University.
This extremely scarce print is a striking representation of a hero of the Harlem Renaissance by Aaron Douglas, a small portrait of the poet Langston Hughes as a young man. Another impression, titled Portrait of Langston Hughes, an unsigned proof, printed in brown and gold metallic ink, is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The museum also has Portrait of Countee Cullen, another very similar Douglas woodcut. Both date from the same year as the artist’s The Emporer Jones series of woodcuts. The artist later revisited these blocks, in addition to making new etchings like Window Shopper and The Junkman, after taking a printmaking class in the summer of 1955 taught by Walter Rogalksi at the Brookyln Museum Art School. Earle p. 221.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
11
James lesesne wells (1902 - 1992)
Circus.
Linoleum cut on cream thin Japan paper, circa 1928. 203x235 mm; 8x9¼ inches, full margins.
A scarce example of early printmaking from the Harlem Renaissance era by James Lesesne Wells.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
12
James lesesne wells (1902 - 1992)
Untitled (Worship with Masks).
Brush and ink on thin cream wove paper, mounted to mat board, circa 1929. 191x127 mm; 7½x5 inches.
This illustration by Wells is from a series of drawings of African sculptural subjects. We have not been able to locate any publication.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
13
James lesesne wells (1902 - 1992)
Untitled (African Fetish).
Linoleum cut on tissue-thin Japan paper. circa 1929. 114x83 mm; 4½x3¼ wide margins.
This very scarce Harlem Renaissance print is a wonderful example of James Lesesne Wells’ block prints and his interest in the influence of African sculpture on modern art. Wells exhibited several simiilar prints in the Exhibition of the Work of Negro Arts at the Harmon Foundation in New York in 1931.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
14
Norman lewis (1917 - 1979)
Untitled (Bangwa Queen).
Color pastel on fine sandpaper, 1935. 508x355 mm; 22x15¼ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Norman Lewis drew this beautiful drawing after visiting the 1935 landmark exhibition African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. African Negro Art curated by James Johnson Sweeney, was intended to show modernism's roots in African Art. A photograph of the sculpture by Walker Evans, who was commissioned to document the large exhibition of over six hundred works, is included in the catalogue (fig. 319). The exhibiton had a profound effect on Lewis - he created a wonderful series of detailed and colorful pastel drawings of the sculptures he had seen.
This drawing is of an ancestral sculpture, a carved wood figure of a woman made by the Bangwa, a people indigenous to western Cameroon. Now best known as the Bangwa Queen, it is one of the most famous and important African sculptures. The sculpture was taken from the Bangwa by a German colonial agent before Germany had colonised the area. After being in the collection of the Museum für VölkerkundeIt in Berlin, it was sold privately to an art dealer in 1926 who then sold it to Helena Rubenstein in the 1930s who lent it to the MoMA exhibition. Collector Harry Franklin then acquired the sculpture from Rubenstein in 1966, and then his daughter sold the work for a record price at Sotheby's in 1990, where it was acquired by the Dapper Foundation in Paris. Man Ray took several photographs of the Bangwa Queen figure in 1934, including Surrealist images of it posed alongside a nude model.
The exhibition African Negro Art clearly resonated with Lewis and other African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance and were influenced by philosopher Alain Locke's exhortation to find artistic models in African art. In 1935, Lewis also joined the 306 group of writers and artists in Harlem who met in the studios of Henry Bannarn and Charles Alston, and was a founding member for the Harlem Artist Guild with Alston, Augusta Savage, Arthur Schomburg and Elba Lightfoot. The MoMA exhibition, which was on view from March 18 to May 19, attracted many artist visitors including Alston, Romare Bearden, and Gwendoline and Jacob Lawrence.
Other known examples of these extraordinary 1935 drawings include Baule Mask, Ivory Coast Baule Mask, Bobin (Boobin, Loom, Baule, Carved Bobbin (Guru) and Dan Mask, four of which were included in Procession, The Art of Norman Lewis, his 2015 retrospective curated by Ruth Fine, and Untitled (Head of a Mule, French Sudan), sold at Swann Galleries on December 10, 2020. Fine pp. 24-25, 248.
Provenance: private collection, Ohio.
Estimate
$25,000 – $35,000
15
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Untitled (Interior of a Harlem Brownstone).
Silver print, 1931. 203x254 mm; 8x10 inches. Signed and inscribed “NYC 1931” by VanDerZee in the negative.
This early photograph of fine decor in a Harlem parlor shows how VanDerZee documented the homes, in addition to portraits, of the rising middle class in Harlem in the early 1930s. An almost identical photograph of the same interior, Interior of a Home, from a slightly different angle, is in the collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
16
James a. porter (1905 - 1970)
Lynching.
Brush, pen and ink on cream wove paper, circa 1933-34. 292x260 mm; 11½x10¼ inches. Initialed in ink, lower right.
This drawing is related to a smaller ink drawing by James A. Porter that illustrated the poem Blasphemy - American Style in the December 1934 issue of the magazine Opportunity, p. 368.
Provenance: the artist; Dorothy Porter Walker; Constance Porter Uzelac; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection, with the estate's labels on the verso.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
17
Charles white (1918 - 1979)
Head of Man - Version II (Diego Rivera).
Crayon on thin, smooth wove paper, mounted to board, 1936. 305x254 mm; 12x10 inches. With the artist's estate signature ink stamp, lower right.
This fascinating portait of one of Charles White's heroes is one of the earliest known drawings by the artist to come to auction. Another, very similar version of this drawing of Diego Rivera was sold at Swann Galleries as lot 22 in African-American Fine Art auction on April 2, 2015, and is catalogued as D10 in Lucinda Gedeon's catalogue raisonné.
This early study was likely made just before or at the beginning of Charles White's study at the Art Institute of Chicago. White was determined to become an artist despite his family's tight finances, and early rejections from discriminatory art schools. White won a $240 scholarship to attend the Chicago Art Institute, entering in 1937. White completed the two year course in one year, despite often walking the 60 blocks home to save money and working as a cook and valet. Upon his graduation in 1938, he soon qualified to join the easel and mural divisions of the Federal Art Project in Illinois.
Diego Rivera's international fame and the rise of the Mexican muralists made a profound impact on Charles White and many other social realists' art work. In the mural divison of the FAP, White worked with muralists Mitchell Siporin and Edward Millman who both had assisted Rivera on murals in Mexico. Later in 1947, upon winning a Rosenwald scholarship to travel and study in Mexico, White met Diego Rivera and studied with David Alfaro Siqueiros at the Esmeralda Escuela del Arte and the Taller de Gráfica Popular in Mexico City. Curiously, despite a strong resemblance, an identification of Rivera was never made with this drawing.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles, with the gallery label on the frame back; private collection, New York; thence by descent to a private collection, California.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
18
Charles white (1918-1979)
Musician with Guitar.
Graphite and pencil on cream wove paper, circa 1937. 254x203 mm; 10x8 inches. With the artist's estate signature ink stamp, lower center edge.
This drawing is a page taken from one of the earliest sketch books of Charles White. White began his studies in the fall of 1937 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Unbound pages from the artist's sketchbooks were sold by Heritage Gallery in Los Angeles when it represented the artist's estate.
Provenance: estate of the artist: Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles, with the gallery label on the frame back; private collection, New York (1995).
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
19
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Two Barns.
Watercolor on cream wove paper, 1937. 450x570 mm; 17¾x22¼ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Illustrated: Ruth Fine. The Art of Norman Lewis, fig. 16, p. 31.
In her retrospective catalogue essay The Spiritual in the Material, Ruth Fine wrote that Two Barns was one of the earliest dated watercolors by Norman Lewis - "one of several in this medium of urban and country scenes completed during the late 1930/early 1940s." Fine p. 31.
Provenance: private collection, New Jersey; private collection, North Carolina, acquired at Swann Galleries, February 14, 2013.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
20
John wesley hardrick (1891 - 1968)
Untitled (Winter Landscape).
Oil on masonite board, 1937. 559x711 mm; 22x28 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
This winter river scene is an excellent example of the landscapes of John Wesley Hardrick. The Indianapolis artist spent his career in Indiana, painting lush landscapes, in addition to portraits and still lifes. Hardrick studied at the John Herron Art Institute until 1918, before fellow Indiana artists William Edouard Scott and Hale Woodruff enrolled. He later shared a studio with a young Woodruff in Indianapolis in 1924. Though Hardrick won the Harmon bronze (first place) medal in 1927, frequently exhibited at the Harmon Foundation, and was awarded a WPA mural commission, his work received little attention during his lifetime. Today, his paintings are in the collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana State Museum and Hampton University.
Provenance: private collection, Louisiana.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Richmond Barthé in 1937
These three sculptures by Richmond Barthé (lots 21-23) display the work of an artist at the height of his career. Barthé was establishing himself as a leading American sculptor of the modern period with his new representation of the male figure – dynamic, muscular and black. His vision culminated in his mid-1930s series of African dancers, including the iconic Feral Benga. Barthé achieved new levels of naturalism in bronze as his passion for his subjects was perfectly matched with his superb technical skill. This was reinforced with the wide acclaim Barthé received for his figures, including African Boy Dancing, shown at the 1937 prestigious exhibition Dance International, 1900 – 1937 at the Rockefeller Center.
Carl Van Vechten, Richmond Barthé, September 23, 1939. Carl Van Vechten Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust. ©Van Vechten Trust.
21
Richmond barthé (1901 - 1989)
African Boy Dancing.
Cast bronze with a dark brown patina, 1937. Approximately 413 mm; 16¼ inches high. Incised with the artist's signature in the base. Cast by the Cellini Bronze Works, New York, with their stamp at the base rear edge.
Illustrated: Parnassus, Volume 12, Issue 3, 1940, (cast illustrated in the "collection of the artist"); Sculpture by Richmond Barthé, Harmon Foundation brochure, reproduced in Samella Lewis, Barthé: His Life in Art p. 68.
African Boy Dancing is an important and strikingly beautiful bronze by Richmond Barthé - representing the culmination of Richmond Barthé's significant study of the male figure in sculpture, anatomy and African dance in the 1930s, and his pioneering realization of an ideal male nude.
African Boy Dancing shares many of its defining characteristics with Barthé's iconic 1935 Feral Benga. Appearing grander than its actual height, this natural and sensual representation of the male figure was made at the height of the artist's career. This lithe dancing figure is also part of Barthé's groundbreaking evocation of both male and homosexual sexuality in early 20th century American Art. The modelling emphasizes the dancer's lean physique, while the pose conveys a fluid, rhythmic movement. When seen in the round, Barthé's technical expertise and attention to the totality of the figure is evident. Both figures also share a very expressive modelling and finish for cast bronze - Barthé's 1930s bronzes wonderfully convey much of the immediacy of his clay model.
African Boy Dancing is an extremely rare bronze. In 1937, six of Barthé's African dancer bronze figures, including African Boy Dancing, were shown in the prestigious month-long exhibition Dance International, 1900 - 1937 at the Rockefeller Center, New York, In 1939, the Barnett-Aden Gallery of Washington, DC also exhibited a cast of African Boy Dancing at Oberlin College. Another later cast of African Boy Dancing was included in the Landau traveling exhibition Richmond Barthé curated by Samella Lewis. This is only the second time that an original cast of a 1930s figure has appeared at auction; an early cast of An African Dancer, 1934, was sold at Bonham's, San Francisco in 2005. Several of Richmond Barthé's mid-career bronzes were cast at the Cellini Bronze Works in Brooklyn, New York: including An African Dancer and the The Boxer, 1942, in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Art historian and Barthé scholar Margaret Vendryes has written extensively on Barthe’s attention to detail:
“At the height of his career, Barthé took great pains with the finish of his sculpture. Foundry work received vigilant scrutiny to ensure that the bronze was chased to a seamless finish and read true to its original clay model. The traces of pulled and smoothed clay created with fingers and tools animate figures like Feral Benga and act as a road map of Barthé’s meticulous rendering methods. This practice also reflected his admiration for the late 19th century French master Auguste Rodin who left impressions on surfaces that are his signature.”
Provenance: David W. Prall (1886 - 1940); thence by descent to a private collection, MA.
Prall was an influential philosopher of art with a PhD in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. A Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1920-21 and 1930-1940; he also taught also at Cornell University, the University of Texas, Amherst College and the University of California. While at Harvard, Prall was a teacher and mentor to composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.
Estimate
$150,000 – $250,000
22
Richmond barthé (1901 - 1989)
Stevedore.
Cast bronze with a dark brown patina on a green marble base, 1937. 778x508x368 mm; 30⅝x20x14½ inches (not including marble base). Cast in 1986 under the supervision of the artist and the Richmond Barthé Trust. Incised with artist's signature, date, numbered 3/8 and incised "©", right base edge.
This iconic work by Richmond Barthé is an important and large bronze by the artist made at the peak of his career. Margaret Vendryes describes this sculpture of muscular dock worker standing on a i-beam in great length - he is both "Barthé's most virile male figure" and "a personal statement". With the epitome of a chiseled physique and commanding presence, the figure of a longshoreman was elevated to great heights by the artist. Barthé had created both a new type of masculine presence in his oeuvre, and a new depiction of a powerful black man.
Stevedore was a non-commissioned work made from the artist's own funds. Vendryes describes how Barthé kept it out of storage and with him when he moved. He later gifted his cast to the St. Ann's Parish Public Library in Jamaica. This later cast has a longer rope that extends above the hand. This is only the second time a cast of Stevedore has come to auction: another was sold at Swann Galleries on October 15, 2017. Another example of this 1985 casting is the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Vendryes pp. 92-96.
Provenance: private collection, Los Angeles.
Estimate
$75,000 – $100,000
23
Richmond barthé (1901 - 1989)
Head of a Dancer (Harald Kreutzberg).
Cast bronze, with a brown patina, mounted on a white marble base, 1937. Approximately 311 mm; 12¼ inches high (not including the base). A later casting, from an edition of 25. Signed, inscribed "xxx" and number stamped "25" along the upper edge, verso.
This contemplative but powerful head by Richmond Barthé is his well known portrait of the Czech-born German dancer Harald Kreutzberg (1902 - 1968). Kreutzberg is an important figure in German ballet and modern dance whom Richmond Barthé befriended when he performed in New York in the 1930s. Barthé made several sculptures of the expressive dancer in busts and figures. Barthé himself had studied Martha Graham dance techniques in an effort to more fully understand the movement and form of dancing figures.
A plaster cast of this head was exhibited and illustrated in the 1974 Anacostia Museum catalogue The Barnett-Aden Collection. A similar bronze casting, the same size as this head, is illustrated in the 1995 The Catalogue of the Barnett-Aden Collection and dated "circa 1973." Other bronze casts of this head are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, the David C. Driskell Collection, the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and the Kinsey Collection of African-American Art and History. Kinard p. 40; Auzenne, p. 42.
Provenance: private collection, Washington, DC; the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, October 4, 2018.
Estimate
$20,000 – $30,000
Modernism
24
Norman lewis (1917 - 1979)
Untitled (Sheet of Studies).
Pen and ink and pencil on cream wove paper, circa 1940s. 508x660 mm; 20x26 inches (sheet). Inscribed "The truth is always vulgar! a mosaic of living things" in pencil, lower left.
This unusually large sheet of paper for sketching by Norman Lewis includes a variety of figurative studies and doodles. The sheet of paper has the printed Inkweed Arts illustrations on the verso, found on many Lewis works on paper through the 1950s.
Provenance: private collection, Louisiana.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
25
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Untitled (Figure Study).
Pen and ink on thin buff wove paper, circa 1940s. 184x122 mm; 7¼x4⅞ inches.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Bill Hodges Gallery, New York, with the gallery label on the frame back; private collection.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
26
Norman lewis (1917 - 1979)
Untitled (Female Nude).
Pen and ink on cream wove paper, circa 1940s. 317x254 mm; 12½x10 inches (sheet).
Illustrated: Norman W. Lewis: Works on Paper, 1935 - 1979, Bill Hodges Gallery, New York, p. 67.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Bill Hodges Gallery, New York; Sande Webster Gallery, Philadelphia, with the gallery label on the frame back; private collection.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
27
Norman lewis (1917 - 1979)
Untitled (Female Nude).
Pen and ink on cream wove paper, circa 1940s. 317x254 mm; 12½x10 inches (sheet). Signed "Norman Lewis" posthumously by his widow Ouida Lewis.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Bill Hodges Gallery, New York; Sande Webster Gallery, Philadelphia, with the gallery label on the frame back; private collection.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
28
Joseph delaney (1904 - 1991)
Artist’s Studio Party.
Oil on linen canvas, 1940. 971x1216 mm; 38¼x47 ⅞ inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Exhibited: Invisible Americans, Black Artists of the ’30s, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, 1968; Joseph Delaney: Retrospective Exhibition, Ewing Gallery of Art and Artchitecture, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, June 6 - July 20, 1986, with the label on the frame back; Life in the City: The Art of Joseph Delaney, Ewing Gallery of Art and Artchitecture, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, September 10 - October 31, 2004; Higher Ground, Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN, loan to permanent exhibition, 2019.
Illustrated: Sam Yates, Joseph Delaney: Retrospective Exhibition, p. 12; Federick C. Moffatt and Sam Yates, Life in the City: The Art of Joseph Delaney, p. 53.
Artist’s Studio Party is the largest and most significant painting by Joseph Delaney to come to auction. This important painting is part of his expressive body of work recording the lives of New Yorkers. Joseph Delaney gives the viewer a fascinating view of the downtown artist's scene - painting in thin layers with a dark, somber palette.
Joseph Delaney became a long time resident of the West Village shortly after moving to New York to join his brother Beauford in 1930. Frederick Moffatt describes how Delaney lived in various garrets and lofts within a small area of the Village and Soho between 1931 and 1959. In 1940, Delaney lived on Sullivan Street, near West Third Street. Sam Yates wrote this painting was inspired by a party he gave friends earlier at 26 Bond Street.
In 1930, Joseph Delaney first studied at the Art Students League where he studied figure drawing with George Bridgman and human anatomy with Thomas Hart Benton. From 1934 to 1940, Delaney worked on various WPA projects in New York including the Index of Design for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pier 72 mural, and with Norman Lewis on the Story of the Recorded Word mural at the New York Public Library. In 1942, Delaney eventually join the easel division just before the WPA was disbanded, and was also awarded a Julius Rosenwald travel fellowship of $1,200, which he used to work and travel down the Eastern coast, from Maine to South Carolina.
Artist’s Studio Party inclusion in the Studio Museum in Harlem exhibition Invisible Americans helped cement Joseph Delany's reputation as an important figure of the 1930s. In his Artforum review of February of 1969, Robert Pincus-Whitten hailed Joseph Delaney; "a single artist of tremendous merit was revealed to me in terms of a developed, tough, and by moments self-mocking Expressionism". Pincus-Whitten describes Village Studio Party as a "scene of group camaraderie an image of what must have seemed then to be the daring option of depicting a white girl dancing with a black man." In another studio painting, Artist's Party, circa 1942, Delaney includes himself seated at a poker game in an artist's apartment alongside a figure he later identified as Jackson Pollock. Both paintings are described in Frederick C. Moffatt's biography Life and Times of Joseph Delaney, 1904 - 1991 and are recognized for taking the viewer into the "sanctified" space of the artist's studio. Moffatt p. 167; Moffat/Yates p. 53; Pincus-Whitten p. 66; Yates p. 12.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; Harvey D. Peyton, Charleston, WV; private collection, Illinois.
Estimate
$100,000 – $150,000
29
Claude clark (1915 - 2001)
Conversations.
Lithograph on buff wove paper, circa 1940-41. 228x304 mm; 9x12 inches, wide (full ?) margins. Signed in pencil, lower margin.
A very good, dark impression of this scarce lithograph - another impression is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent, private collection, Texas.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
30
Claude clark (1915 - 2001)
Drill Press.
Carbograph (carborundum etching) on cream wove paper, 1941. 241 mm; 9½ inches diameter (tondo), wide margins. Signed in ball point pen and ink, lower right. Published by the Pennsylvania Art Program, WPA, Philadelphia, 1941.
A very good, dark impression of this scarce WPA print - we have not found a record of another impression at auction.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent, private collection, Texas.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
31
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Comrades.
Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1943. 269x116 mm; 10 ⅝x4 ⅝ inches, wide margins. Signed, titled, dated "10-24-43", numbered 2/37 and inscribed "To my__A Swell Guy, Norman" in pencil, lower margin.
Illustrated: Ruth Fine. Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis, fig. 13; p 137 (another impression).
A very good, dark impression of this scarce print; other impressions are in the collections of the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH and the North Carolina Central University Art Museum, Durham, NC.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
32
Allan rohan crite (1910 - 2007)
Et verbum caro factum est, et habitávit in nobis, et vídimus glóriam eius.
Pen and ink on cream illustration board, 1943. 254x216 mm; 10x8½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right recto. Signed, dedicated and inscribed with the artist's Boston address and a lengthy description of the scene in ink, verso.
Crite illustrated the Biblical story and church liturgy as a reflection of himself and his Boston community: black clergymen read the verse from the Bible before a black Mary and baby Jesus.
Provenance: the Evans-Tibbs collection, Washington, DC; private collection, New York (1992).
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
33
Margaret burroughs (1917 - 2010)
Untitled (Portait of a Young Woman).
Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1945. 330x254 mm; 13x10 inches, wide margins. Signed “Margaret Taylor Goss” and dated “Sept ‘45” in pencil, lower margin.
Burroughs was known as Margaret Taylor Goss when she married the artist Bernard Goss, until they divorced and she married her second husband Charles Gordon Burroughs in 1949.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
34
James a. porter (1905 - 1970)
Child Reading.
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1945. 267x216 mm; 10½x8½ inches. Signed and titled in charcoal, verso.
Exhibited: James A. Porter: An Exhibition of Recent Paintings, Dupont Theatre Art Gallery, Washington, DC, May 24- July 4, 1949; James A. Porter: Artist and Art Historian; The Memory of The Legacy, Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, October 15, 1992 - February 9, 1993.
Provenance: the artist; Dorothy Porter Walker; Constance Porter Uzelac; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection, with the estate's labels on the verso.
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
35
Robert neal (1916 - 1987)
Untitled (Dock Scene).
Watercolor and gouache on cream wove paper, circa 1945-50. 343x381 mm; 13½x15 inches. Signed indistinctly in watercolor, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Colorado.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
36
Fred jones (1914 - 2004)
Untitled (Circus Performers with Horse).
Oil and gold metallic paint on masonite board, circa 1944. 305x406 mm; 12x16 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
The painting's wood frame was also painted by Fred Jones.
Provenance: Derrick Beard, Chicago; private collection, Illinois.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
37
Hayward oubre (1916 - 2006)
Entanglement.
Etching and aquatint, 1946. 184x149 mm; 7¼x5 ⅞ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 2/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed later by the artist, circa 1980.
Oubre studied etching with Mauricio Lasansky at the University of Iowa while working on his MFA from 1946 to 1948.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
38
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Pensive.
Cast bronze, with a dark brown patina, mounted on a wooden base, 1946. 430x260x216 mm; 17x10½x8½ inches, not including the base. Proof, aside from the numbered edition of 10, cast beginning in 1967. Incised "E.C." and "46", lower right verso.
Illustrated: David Driskell Hidden Heritage; Afro-American Art, 1800 - 1950, fig. 56, p. 84; Lucinda Gedeon. Elizabeth Catlett Sculpture; A Fifty-Year Retrospective (another cast); Samella Lewis, The Art of Elizabeth Catlett, p, 172 (another cast).
Exhibited: Hidden Heritage: Afro-American Art, 1800 - 1950, traveling exhibition organized by the Art Museum Association of America, San Francisco, starting at the Bellevue Art Museum, Seattle, WA, and including the Mississippi Museum of Art, September 14, 1985 - January 10, 1988, with the exhibition labels on the base underside. Catlett lent this sculpture from her personal collection to the exhibition.
Pensive is a significant sculpture by Elizabeth Catlett, cast in bronze after one of her earliest figures. The original plaster Pensive followed the theme of the four terracotta figures exhibited in her 1946 first solo exhibition at the Barnett-Aden Gallery in Washington, DC: Negro Woman, Tired, Cold and Frustration. Catlett importantly first represented modern Black women in her Negro Woman series - a narrative of identity, experience and representation. These figures show the physical nature and toll of their struggle. With her rolled up sleeves, crossed arms and leaning posture, Pensive is an expressive representation, sharing the modern simplified and angular features found in Catlett's Woman, 1942, oil on canvas, and Negro Woman, lithograph, 1945.
Catlett did not begin making bronze sculpture until the early 1960s. She made the mold and cast the first bronze of Pensive after the 1946 plaster figure in 1967. Samella Lewis recorded both the 1946 plaster and a 1978 cast in a list of Catlett's sculpture in her 1984 monograph The Art of Elizabeth Catlett. The final cast, 10/10, was made in 1995 for the Broad Art Museum (then the Kresge) at Michigan State University - their archives includes a letter written by Catlett describing the later casting in Mexico. The original plaster figure is visible in the 1980 photographs of Catlett's studio that illustrate Lewis's monograph. Casts of Pensive are in the collections of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, and the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Gedeon pp. 17-18, 43; Lewis pp. 33, 84, 172, 188-89.
Provenance: collection of the artist, Cuernavaca, Mexico; acquired directly from the artist at the Eleventh Annual Artists’ Salute to Black History Month, Los Angeles, February 6, 1993; private collection, California (1993); thence by descent to the current owner, California (2005).
Estimate
$50,000 – $75,000
39
Charles white (1918 - 1979)
John Brown.
Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1949. 380x260 mm; 15x10¼ inches, full margins. Edition of 30. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Charles" in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Robert Blackburn, Printmaking Workshop, New York.
An excellent, richly inked impression of this scarce print; other impressions can be found in the collections of the Library of Congress and the Hampton University Museum, Hampton, VA. Gedeon Ea9.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
40
Margaret burroughs (1917 - 2010)
Faces.
Linoleum cut on Japan paper, 1950. 355x280 mm; 14x11 inches, wide (full ?) margins. Signed, titled and numbered 1/10 in ink, lower margin.
A very good, dark impression of this very scarce linoleum cut.
Provenance: the Evan-Tibbs collection, Washington, DC; private collection, New York (1994).
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
41
Hartwell yeargans (1915 - 2005)
Untitled (Two Women).
Oil on linen canvas, 1953. 864x610 mm; 34x24 inches. Signed and dated "53" in oil, lower right.
An early, modern painting by artist Hartwell Yeargans who studied painting and drawing at the New York City's Art League under Morris Kantor from 1948 to 1951.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; private collection, New York.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
42
Charles mcgee (1924 - 2021)
Untitled (Still Life).
Oil on masonite board, 1952. 610x406 mm; 24x16 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
This still life is one of the earliest paintings by this important Detroit artist to come to auction. Beginning in 1947, Charles McGee was attending art classes part time at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Detroit (now the College for Creative Studies). In 1951, he studied oil painting with the director Sarkis Sarkisian and was a classmate of Hughie Lee-Smith. From this early, academic beginning, McGee's work evolved into the large, vibrant and multimedia constructions that he is known for today. His works are now in many museum collections, including the Detroit Institute of Arts, Howard University and Clark Atlanta University. In 2009, Dr. Julia R. Myers curated the first major retrospective of his work with the exhibition and catalogue Energy, Charles McGee at Eighty-Five at Eastern Michigan University. The artist recently passed away on February 4th of this year. Myers pp. 6-7.
Provenance: private collection, Michigan.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
43
Aaron douglas (1899 - 1979)
Oak Bluffs (Vineyard Haven).
Etching and aquatint on cream wove paper, circa 1955. 114x191 mm; 4½x7½ inches, wide margins. Signed, titled, and numbered 11/15 in pencil, lower margin. Printed in 1975 by printmaker Stephanie Pogue, who signed and inscribed "Impression: Stephanie E. Pogue, 1975" in pencil, lower margin.
Alternative titles used by Aaron Douglas for this scarce etching include Vineyard Haven and Three Trees. After receiving a Carnegie Foundation grant, Douglas traveled and painted along the East Coast in the summer of 1951 - including a visit to Martha's Vineyard. Earle p. 220.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Postwar Art
44
Walter augustus simon (1916 - 1979)
Untitled (Study in Brown).
Casein on press board, circa 1955-60. 508x203 mm; 20x8 inches. Signed in casein, lower right.
Born in Brooklyn, Walter Augustus Simon studied art at Pratt Institute, the National Academy of Design and New York University in the 1930s. After army service during World War II and with help of the G.I. Bill, Simon re-entered NYU and earned a BS and MA in art history the late 1940s, and finally a PhD in 1961, with a dissertation on Henry Ossawa Tanner. The same year, Simon joined the diplomatic corps of USIA (the United States Information Agency) and managed to continue an artistic career while posted abroad in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Kabul and Cairo. Simon has exhibited his work in many museum and university galleries including the High Museum of Art, the Palais de Congress, Paris, and Spelman College Museum of Art. His art work is found today in the collections of Atlanta University, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, Cairo, Egypt and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New Jersey.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
45
Walter augustus simon (1916 - 1979)
Untitled (Study in Grey).
Casein on press board, circa 1955-60. 508x203 mm; 20x8 inches. Signed in casein, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New Jersey.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
46
Charles alston (1907 - 1977)
City at Night.
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1956-60. 914x1270 mm; 36x50 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. Signed and inscribed in ink with both the artist's residential address, "555 Edgecombe Avenue, N.Y. 32 N.Y." and his studio address "Studio - 539 W. 152nd St." in ink, upper left verso, and titled in pencil and graphite (twice) verso.
Exhibited: Charles Alston, Artist and Teacher, Kenkeleba Gallery, New York, NY, May 13 - July 1, 1990, with remains of the gallery label on the frame back; Challenge of the Modern: African-American Artists, 1925-1945, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, January 23 - March 30, 2003, with the label on the frame back.
Illustrated: Lowery Stokes Sims. The Challenge of the Modern: African American Artists, 1925-1945, p. 67.
This striking urban abstraction by Charles Alston is an important painting, an outstanding and scarce example of a large modernist canvas. Alston's vision is rooted in his earlier urban nocturnes of the late 1940s, Harlem at Night, 1948 and Untitled (New York Cityscape), circa 1948. Both Alston and Norman Lewis shared a new vision of fragmented urban life against a dark, atmospheric ground. By 1950, Alston had transitioned completely into abstraction, and his Untitled, oil on canvas, 1950, entered in the national juried competition, America Painting Today, was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1951.
While it was dated 1948 in the Studio Museum exhibition, this large canvas, with its loaded and broad brushstrokes appears closer in date to 1960. His 1962 solo exhibition at Dunbarton Galleries in Boston featured Tenements, a very similar 40x50 inch oil painting, illustrated on the cover of the brochure. By 1960, Alston was painting and exhibiting compositions inspired by the urban environment seen from his Harlem at night for inspiration - including paintings like Across the River, 1959. His exhibition at Kenekeleba Gallery included other similar paintings like Nocturne (Across the Hudson River), 1964 and Tenements again, now titled Demolition and not dated. Jennings pp. 23 and 62.
Provenance: the artist, New York; Louise Logan, New York; Pierre M. Sutton, New York; private collection, New York.
Louise Logan, the sister of Dr. Myra Adele Logan was married to the artist Elmer Simms Campbell.
Estimate
$100,000 – $150,000
47
Charles alston (1907 - 1977)
Untitled (Head of a Girl).
Watercolor on cream wove paper, 1956. 254x330 mm; 10x13 inches. Signed in watercolor, and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Louisiana.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
48
Charles alston (1907 - 1977)
Untitled.
Sand and mixed media on masonite board, 1960. 444x600 mm; 17½x23½ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
49
Hayward oubre (1916 - 2006)
Portrait of a Bird.
Oil on canvas board, circa 1960. 457x356 mm; 18x14 inches. Signed, titled, inscribed "oil" and "Art Dept. Alabama State College, Montgomery, Ala" in ink on a label, verso
Hayward Oubre was an art instructor at Alabama State College from 1950-1965.
Provenance: the estate of the artist.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
50
Earl hooks (1927 - 2005)
Vessel.
Glazed stoneware, 1960. 330x88x114 mm; 13x3 ⅜x4½ inches. Incised signature on underside.
Earl Hooks was among the most significant Black ceramic artists of the 20th Century and the founder of Studio A, one of the country's first Black owned and operated fine arts galleries in Gary, Indiana. Born August 2, 1927 in Baltimore, Earl Hooks received a BA degree from Howard University in 1949, attended Catholic University in Washington, DC from 1949-51 and then received graduate certificates from both Rochester Institute of Technology in 1954 and the School of American Craftsman in New York in ceramics in 1955. He served as both professor and chair of the art department at Fisk University from 1961-67.
Hooks gained recognition for his use of monochromatic forms that maximized the inherent properties of his materials - creating his quiet and somber sculptural works.
Artist and art historian Amalia Amaki has described Hooks as “committed to portrayals related to the African American experience and creative techniques that emphasized his keen understanding of the relationships between balance, light, harmony and space.”
Provenance: private collection, Illinois.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
51
Earl hooks (1927 - 2005)
Study for Ceramic Sculpture.
Graphite on thin wove paper, 1963. 304x228 mm; 12x9 inches. Signed, titled and dated in pencil on the mount, verso.
Provenance: the artist; private collection, Tennessee.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
52
Walter sanford (1912 - 1987)
Untitled (Modernist Figure).
Mixed media with canvas and fabric collage on board, circa 1960. 914x610 mm; 36x24 inches. Signed in oil, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, New York; private collection, Alabama (2015).
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
53
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Untitled.
Mixed media and collage on thick cardstock, 1961. 267x349 mm; 10½x13¾ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Sweden.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
54
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Untitled.
Gouache, ink and collage on board, 1961. 440x620 mm; 17½x24½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Netherlands.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
55
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Shinkichi Tajiri.
Gouache, watercolor, crayon, graphite and collage of various printed papers on cream wove paper, 1963. 508x774 mm; 20x30½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Netherlands.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
56
Irene v. clark (1927 - 1984)
Untitled (Head of an African Man).
Oil on board, circa 1965. 254x203 mm; 10x8 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. Signed and inscribed with the artist's address "743 Haight, San Francisco" in ink on the frame back.
Provenance: private collection, Nevada.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
57
Irene v. clark (1927 - 1984)
Untitled (African Huts).
Oil on cream wove paper, circa 1965. 203x254 mm; 8x10 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. With a label signed and inscribed with the artist's address "743 Haight, San Francisco" in ink on the frame back.
Provenance: private collection, Nevada.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
58
Robert neal (1916 - 1987)
Untitled (Winter Landscape).
Oil on masonite board, 1963. 406x508 mm; 16x20 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
This Robert Neal oil is a likely a landscape from the Ohio Valley, and shows the continued influence of Hale Woodruff on the artist in his postwar painting. Like Frederick Flemister and Albert Wells, Neal was both a student and follower of Woodruff.
Provenance: acquired from family descendants of the artist, Colorado; private collection, Colorado.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
59
Merton d. simpson (1928 - 2013)
Untitled (Abstract Seascape).
Oil on cotton canvas, circa 1965. 406x1016 mm; 16x40 inches. Signed in oil, (indistinctly) lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New York.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
60
Samella lewis (1924 - )
Mr. and Mrs.
Linoleum cut on Japan paper, 1966. 495x406 mm; 19½x16 inches, wide margins. Artist's proof, aside from the edition of 10. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Artist's Proof" in pencil, lower margin.
A very good, dark impression of this very scarce linoleum cut.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
61
Samella lewis (1924 - )
Migrants.
Linoleum cut on thin imitation Japan paper, 1967. 432x610 mm; 17x24 inches, full margins. Artist’s proof, aside from the edition of 10. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed “Artist’s Proof” in pencil, lower margin.
Other impressions of this scarce print are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
62
Samella lewis (1924 - )
Children’s Game II.
Linoleum cut on Japan paper, 1967. 590x692 mm; 23¼x27 ⅜ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 4/25 in pencil, lower margin.
A very good, dark impression of this scarce linoleum cut.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
63
Samella lewis (1924 - )
Sunrise.
Oil on linen canvas, 1962. 686x914 mm; 27x36 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Sunrise is a striking and scarce example of Samella Lewis's embrace of abstract painting in the early 1960s, and her interest in non-Western symbolism. She began teaching at Plattsburgh in 1958, and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study at First Institute of Chinese Civilization and Tung Mai University in Taiwan in 1962. She continuing teaching Asian history at SUNY Plattsburgh until 1965 when she moved to Los Angeles. There she was awarded a National Defense Education Act post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Southern California, where she studied the Chinese language and Asian civilization.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist: private collection, Florida (1962).
Samella Lewis and the owner were both on the faculty of SUNY Plattsburgh at the time.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
64
Earl beauford miller (1930 - 2003)
African Flyer.
Collage of various printed and color papers, 1965. 406x381 mm; 16x15 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower center.
This colorful collage is listed as one of several of Earl Miller's works in Cederholm's Afro-American Artists, and is only the second recorded artwork by Miller to come to auction.
The Chicago-born artist studied at the Pratt Institute of Art with Richard Lindner and at the Brooklyn Museum Art School with Reuben Tam from 1954-1956. Miller exhibited in 1960 and 1961 at the Phoenix Gallery, New York, before living and exhibiting throughout Europe, including Germany, Spain and Scandinavia. After returning to the New York, in 1963 he became one of the younger members of the Spiral Group collective, joining his mentor Charles Alston and artists Emma Amos, Romare Bearden, Reginald Gammon, Felrath Hines, Alvin Hollingsworth, Norman Lewis, Richard Mayhew, Merton Simpson, Hale Woodruff and James Yeargans. Miller went on to teach visual art at the University of Washington, Seattle from 1969.
Provenance: the Museum of Modern Art Lending Services, New York, with the label on the frame back; private collection, Massachusetts.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
65
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Toyopet I.
Acrylic on cotton canvas, 1966-1997. 610x610 mm; 24x24 inches. Signed, titled and dated in ink, verso.
Exhibited: Middendorf/Lane Gallery, Washington, DC, with the gallery label on the stretcher bars. According to Jonathan Binstock, Gilliam began having a relationship with the gallery in 1978.
Toyopet I. is a dashing, experimental canvas, and one of the earliest abstract paintings by Sam Gilliam to come to auction. This intriguing painting dates from Gilliam's first period of experimentation in color field painting from 1966-1968 with his earliest staining of raw canvas and use of improvisation. With a similar ethereal atmosphere of blurred earthy colors, Toyopet I is painting appears closely related to Gilliam's Light Fan, 1966, in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Other similar, small color field paintings from this 1966 period include So They Can and Autumn Points; each share an gauzy organic flow of bands of verdant color. Then Gilliam revisited the stained canvas in 1997, adding daring dashes of more vibrant color, suspended in layers of acrylic medium. Binstock p. 163.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, Maryland (1997).
Estimate
$40,000 – $60,000
66
Hale woodruff (1901 - 1979)
Primordial Landscape.
Oil on linen canvas, 1967. 1016x1270 mm; 40x50 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. Signed, titled and inscribed "N.Y.C." and "22 East 8th St., N.Y.C. 10003" in ink, upper stretcher bar verso.
Exhibited: Hale Woodruff: An Exhibition of Selected Paintings and Drawings, 1927 - 1967, Leob Center, New York University, New York, May 15 - June 8, 1967; Hale A. Woodruff: Paintings, Prints and Watercolors, Morgan State College, Baltimore, May 21 - June 14, 1968. Hale Woodruff's retrospective was a celebration of his retirement from New York University as a Professor Emeritus that year.
This large canvas is an excellent example of Hale Woodruff's postwar painting in which he describes landscape and natural phenomena within the idiom of Abstract Expressionism. This significant and striking canvas shows Woodruff's continued evolution as an abstract painter through the 1960s. In addition to continuing his Celestial Gate series, Woodruff now creates some of his most abstract painting with his landscapes. Woodruff's landscape is a beautiful, modernist composition - bold, horizontal strokes define layers between bands of both earthy and jewel-like colors. Another canvas from 1967, Woodruff's Figure, is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New York; the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, April 5, 2018.
Estimate
$120,000 – $180,000
67
Beauford delaney (1901 - 1979)
Untitled (African Figure).
Oil on cotton canvas, 1968. 610x502 mm; 24x19¾ inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
Exhibited: the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, with the label on the frame back.
In this striking canvas, Beauford Delaney combines a representation of an African fertility figure within a saturated yellow color field painting. Delaney had an interest in African sculpture going back to his reading of Alain Locke's New Negro, and visiting artist Cloyd Boykin's Primitive African Arts Center in the 1930s. Having seen the influence of African art on Picasso and other modernist painters in both New York and Paris, Delaney often incorporated African motifs and figures, including Earth Mother, 1950 and Makonde Figure, 1952. There is also an oil on paper work that is the mirror image of this figure in the collection of the Knoxville Museum of Art. Leeming pp. 41 and 102; Powell p. 58.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; James and Gloria Jones, Paris; estate of Gloria Jones, New York; private collection, New York; the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, October 4, 2018. American writer
James Jones and his wife Gloria were close friends, collectors and supporters of Beauford Delaney's while he lived in Paris.
Estimate
$120,000 – $180,000
68
Alma w. thomas (1891 - 1978)
My Fall Garden.
Watercolor on cream wove paper, circa 1967. 152x228 mm; 6x9 inches (each side of the folded paper). Initialed in ball point pen and red ink, lower right recto. Titled and inscribed "Happy Birthday to my Sister, With Love, Alma" in watercolor and ink, inside.
Provenance: gift from the artist; private collection, Washington, DC; private collection, California.
Estimate
$12,000 – $18,000
69
Alma w. thomas (1891 - 1978)
Untitled (Garden Composition).
Watercolor on cream wove paper, 1967. 127x178 mm; 5x7 inches. Initialed and dated in ball point pen and blue ink, lower right recto,
Provenance: gift from the artist; private collection, Washington, DC; private collection, California.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
70
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Martin Luther King, Jr. - Mountain Top.
Color screenprint on wove paper, 1968. 760x495 mm; 29 ⅞x19½ inches. Printed by Charles Cardinale, Fine Creations, Inc., New York. Published by HKL, Ltd. and List Art Posters., New York.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
71
Robert a. sengstacke (1943 - 2017)
Inauguration of Richard Hatcher.
Silver print, 1968. 229x120 mm; 9x4¾ inches. Signed and dated in pencil on the mount, verso.
This scarce photograph by Robert "Bobby" Sengstacke of Richard Hatcher was taken during Hatcher's inauguration as Mayor of Gary, Indiana in 1968. Hatcher, along with Carl Stokes of Cleveland, were the first Black mayors of large urban American cities. Sengstacke is an important photographer associated with the Black Arts movement in America, and contributed images of African American political and cultural leaders to his family's newspaper, The Chicago Defender, in Chicago. His photographs have recently been exhibited in Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties (Brooklyn Museum, 2014), Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (Tate Modern, 2017), and Never a Lovely So Real: Photography and Film in Chicago, 1950-1980 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2018). His photographs are in many public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Chicago (2008).
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
72
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Negro es Bello (Black is Beautiful).
Lithograph on cream wove paper, 1968. 330x406 mm; 13x16 inches, wide (full ?) margins. Signed, titled, dated, inscribed “EE” and numbered 4/11 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
73
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Torture of Mothers.
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 1970. 470x330 mm; 16x13 inches, trimmed margins. Signed, dated, titled and numbered 22/35 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
74
Lev mills (1938 - )
Gemini II.
Etching and aquatint on cream wove paper, 1969. 305x305 mm; 12x12 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 23/50 in pencil, lower margin.
Born in Tallahassee, Florida, Lev Mills has been an artist living and working in Atlanta, Georgia since 1973. He received his BA from Florida A&M University, his MA and MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a postgraduate certificate from the Slade School of Fine Arts, University College- University of London. Lev Mills’ career had been split between being a working visual artist and an educator. He taught at Spelman College for thirty years, including fourteen years as the Art Department Chair, before retiring in 2009.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
75
Cleveland bellow (1946 - 2009)
Catch a Southern Beauty.
Screenprint and collage on coated paper, circa 1970. 610x508 mm; 24x20 inches (sheet). Signed and titled in pencil, upper sheet edge.
This Pop art image is a scarce early and unique work of art by Cleveland Bellow, a central figure in the Bay Area art scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Recently, his artwork was included in the traveling exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power organized by the Tate Modern, London. The woman depicted in the artwork is Adrienne McGee, a girlfriend of the artist at the time.
Provenance: the Melvin Holmes collection, San Francisco; private collection.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
76
Dindga mccannon (1947 - )
Untitled (Three Women).
Acrylic and pen and ink on wove paper, 1969. 432x356 mm; 17x14 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, Maryland.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
77
Vincent smith (1929 - 2003)
The Couple.
Mixed media on paper, circa 1970. 610x457 mm; 24x18 inches. Signed in ink, lower right.
Provenance: Sheldon Ross Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan; private collection (1970s); thence by descent, private collection.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
78
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Mother and Child.
Color screenprint and lithograph, 1971. 610x457 mm; 24x18 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 51/150 in pencil, lower left. Published by David G. Godine Publishers and the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York. From Conspiracy: The Artist as Witness, with the ink stamp "Copyright 1971 Romare Bearden" on the verso. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#34.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
79
Romare bearden (1911- 1988)
Untitled (Street Scene).
Offset color lithograph, circa 1972. 245x480 mm; 9¾x19 inches, full margins. Artist’s proof, aside from the edition of 50. Signed and inscribed “For Julia” in pencil, lower margin.
Another unnumbered impression is illustrated in From Print to Process: Graphic Works by Romare Bearden. Corlett pl. 40; p.73.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
80
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Girl in a Garden.
Collage of various papers and printed fabrics, with ink and surface abrasion, mounted on masonite board, 1972. 560x356 mm; 22x14 inches. Signed in blue ink, upper left.
Girl in a Garden is an exquisitely layered example of Romare Bearden's mid-career collage. The figure is comprised of a now familiar Bearden photo montage of African masks, in contrast with the textures and color of the rest of the composition. Bearden created faces using cut images of African masks and sculptures from magazines and exhibition catalogues beginning with his first series of collages in 1964. According to Helen Shannon in her 2007 essay "African Art and Cubism, Proto-Collage and Collage in the Work of Romare Bearden," Bearden used African sculpture as an aesthetic source even earlier in his 1940s paintings. Like his 1940s, quasi-cubist paintings, Bearden returned to African sources for large figure compositions again in the late 1960s.
This collage shows Bearden's integration of all types of his collage medium--patterned paper, fabric, hand colored paper, and distressed solid colored papers. Bearden also introduced surface abrasion as early as 1968, with more solid areas of color and less collage photographic images, and added fabric into his collage with works like She-BA, 1970, Patchwork Quilt, 1970, and Conjunction, 1971. In Girl in a Garden, Bearden deftly balances a composition of rectangular areas of color that emphasize the two-dimensional surface; with this spatial flatness, Bearden references both the history of Dutch and ancient Chinese painting, with an awareness of contemporary abstraction.
Bearden has created a new type of icon with these masked or conjure figures, mythological African Americans born of the Diaspora and the New World. Bearden continued to explore the subject of myth in his heroic Odysseus series that he began this same year. Tweedy p. 22.
Provenance: the artist; Cordier & Ekstrom, New York, with the gallery label on the frame back; private New York collection (1972); the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, October 8, 2019.
Estimate
$150,000 – $250,000
81
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Before the First Whistle (Early Morning).
Color lithograph, 1973. 558x457 mm; 22x18 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 31/50 in pencil, lower margin. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#33.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
82
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Tropical Flowers.
Color etching and aquatint, circa 1971-72. 395x535 mm; 15½x21 inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 17/100 in pencil, lower margin. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#79A.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
83
Emilio cruz (1938 - 2004)
Untitled.
Color ink and felt tip pens on cream illustration board, 1971. 610x483 mm; 24x19 inches. Signed and dated in ink, upper right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, Barbara Jones-Hogu (c. 1971); the estate of Barbara Jones-Hogu; private collection.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
84
Barbara jones-hogu (1938 - 2017)
Land Where My Father Died.
Color screenprint on buff wove paper, 1968. 775x578 mm; 30½ x 22¾ inches, full margins. Signed "Barbara J. Jones", titled, dated and numbered 3/5 in pencil, lower margin.
Illustrated: Barbara Wildholm, Rebecca Zorach, Zoe Whitley and Faheem Majeed. Baraba Jones-Hogu: Resist, Relate, Unite, fig. 1, p. 76.
Other impressions of this rare, early screenprint by AfriCOBRA founder Barbara Jones-Hogu are in the collection of the Blanton Museum, University of Texas, Austin, and the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. Other public collections that hold her prints include the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Tate Modern, London.
Provenance: the artist; Williams Jones, Chicago (gift from the artist to her brother); private collection.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
85
Wadsworth jarrell (1929 - )
Revolutionary.
Color screenprint on wove paper, 1972. 838x673 mm; 33x26½ inches. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 161/300 in pencil, lower edge. A very good, vibrant impression with bright colors.
Wadsworth Jarrell was one of the founding members of the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA) when the artist collective formed in Chicago in 1968. Wadsworth Jarrell made the screenprint Revloutionary during his first year teaching at Howard University in 1972. AfriCOBRA members often made prints based upon their paintings, making these popular visual messages affordable and accessible to a wider audience. Jarrell’s screenprint is made after his same-titled 1971 painting; the now iconic portrait of Angela Davis is in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
86
Nelson stevens (1938 - )
Yes, We Will.
Mixed media on cream wove paper, 1972. 953x759 mm; 37½x29 ⅞ inches.
Exhibited: AfriCOBRA III., Howard University Gallery of Art, Howard University, Washington, DC (Cat. #26), April, 1973, and University Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, September, 1973; Levels and Degrees: Paintings and Drawings by James Phillips and Nelson Stevens., the Carl Van Vechten Gallery, Fisk University, Nashville, TN, 1974 (Cat. #12)
Yes, We Will is a scarce, large work on paper by Nelson Stevens from his important period of work with the Chicago-based art collective AfriCOBRA. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Stevens received his BFA in painting from Ohio University in Athens, OH in 1962, and his MFA in 1969 from Kent State University in Kent, OH. After brief teaching stints in Cleveland, Ohio, Stevens was hired as Assistant Professor of Art at Northern Illinois University where he taught from 1969 to 1971. It was at this time that Stevens was invited to join the newly formed art collective AfriCOBRA - the group was founded by Chicago artists Jeff Donaldson, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu, and Gerald Williams. Stevens exhibited in every AfriCOBRA art exhibition beginning with AfriCOBRA I at the Studio Museum. He then was a Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts from 1972 to 2003. Today artworks by Nelson Stevens are in many museum collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Smithsonian Institution and the Tate Modern. His artwork was also featured in the recent important traveling museum exhibtion Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power organized by the Tate Modern.
The University of Maryland Art Gallery has requested the loan of this work for an upcoming Nelson Stevens retrospective exhibition (dates pending after the exhibition was postponed in 2020).
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, Grace Meacham, Cincinnati, OH (c. 1974); private collection, Ohio.
Estimate
$20,000 – $30,000
87
Sherman beck (1942 - )
Untitled.
Lithograph on Arches paper, 1972. 762x558 mm; 30x22 inches (sheet), full margins. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
A scarce lithograph by Chicago painter, illustrator and educator Sherman Beck who was an early member of the artist collective AfriCOBRA - showing in both the 1969 AfriCOBRA: Ten in Search of a Nation and 1970 AfriCOBRA II exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Beck graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago and completed further studies at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. He worked as a commercial artist, free-lance illustrator and taught commercial art at his alma mater Dunbar High School for twenty-two years. Beck had a solo exhibition at African American Cultural Center, University of Illinois-Chicago in 2008, and a retrospective at the South Side Community Art Center in 2013. His work was included in AfriCOBRA 50 at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago, September 28 - November 3, 2018 and AfriCOBRA: Messages to the People, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, November 27, 2018 - March 24, 2019.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
88
Gerald williams (1941 - )
Big Payback, Get Ready.
Color screenprint on red wove paper, 1975. 584x406 mm; 23x16 inches (sheet), full margins.
Gerald Williams was a founding member of the art collective AfriCOBRA, and his screenprints are in many public collections including the Brooklyn Museum, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Tate Modern, and others.
Provenance: gift from the artist, Barbara Jones-Hogu; the estate of Barbara Jones-Hogu; private collection.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
89
Gerald williams (1941 - )
Create.
Color screenprint on wove paper, circa 1975. 457x597 mm; 18x23½ inches. Signed in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: gift from the artist, Barbara Jones-Hogu; the estate of Barbara Jones-Hogu; private collection.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
90
John whitmore (1948 - )
Sleep.
Oil on cotton canvas, 1970. 279x305 mm; 11x12 inches. Signed, titled and dated in oil, verso.
John Whitmore was an early member and teacher at the Studio Watts Workshop, Los Angeles, founded by James Woods and Guy Miller in 1964. Whitmore also showed at the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles in 1975 where he was a student of Charles White. His figurative artwork was in the collection of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company collection, and is now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
91
Charles white (1918 - 1979)
Blues.
Color lithograph on Rives paper, 1971. 285x687 mm; 11½x 26¾ inches. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 2/100 in pencil, lower right. Printed by William Law III and the Tamstone Group, Los Angeles, with their blindstamps lower right. Commissioned by J. B. Lansing Sound Inc. (JBL) Los Angeles, with their label on the frame back.
An excellent, bright impression of this scarce print. This is the first impression we have handled at Swann Galleries. Gedeon Ea 27.
Provenance: Heritage Galleries, Los Angeles, with their label on the frame back; private collection, Maryland (2014).
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
92
Charles white (1918 - 1979)
Pope X.
Etching on cream wove paper, 1972. 475x700 mm; 18¾x27½ inches, wide margins. Artist's proof, one of only 3 signed artist's proofs, from a total of 19 signed prints. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "A/P" in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Joseph and Hugo Mugnani, Los Angeles.
A superb impression of this large and very scarce etching - we have not seen another impression at auction since a signed trial proof was sold at Swann Galleries on February 19, 2008. Gedeon notes while the prints were numbered /25, there were only 12 signed impressions, 3 signed artist's proofs and 4 signed trial proofs, with two estate-stamped proofs. Another impression printed in brown ink, numbered 3/25, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The subject of the etching anticipates Charles White's painting Black Pope (Sandwich Board Man), oil wash on board, 1973, acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 2013. Curator Esther Adler in her 2017 monograph Charles White Black Pope describes how the idea of a black pope was floated in 1970s media, including a 1973 Encore magazine article, a copy of which is found in Charles White's papers at the Archives of American Art. Adler pp. 32-33; Gedeon Ec9.
Provenance: Joseph Mugnani, Los Angeles; thence by descent, private collection, California.
Estimate
$20,000 – $30,000
93
John wilson (1922 - 2015)
Street Children.
Etching, 1973. 254x445 mm; 10x17½ inches, full margins. The bon-a-tirer impession, aside from the edition of 75. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed “Bon a Tirer” in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
94
Walter h. williams (1920 - 1998)
Butterflies.
Color woodcut on cotton batting, 1972. 350 mm; 22¼ inches diameter (tondo), wide (full ?) margins. Artist’s proof. Signed, titled, dated, inscribed “imp” and numbered 1/1 in pencil, lower margin.
Another artist’s proof impression, printed in different colors, is illustrated in The Artwork of Walter Williams, M. Hanks Gallery, p. 57.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
95
Walter h. williams (1920 - 1998)
Summer.
Color woodcut on cotton batting, 1974. 350 mm; 13¾ inches diameter (tondo), wide (full ?) margins. Signed, titled, dated, inscribed “imp” and numbered 6/10 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
96
Walter h. williams (1920 - 1998)
Summer No. 2.
Color woodcut on cotton batting, 1974. 350 mm; 13¾ inches diameter (tondo), wide (full ?) margins. Signed, titled, dated, inscribed “imp” and numbered 9/10 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
97
Arthur roland (1935 - 2019)
The Conversation.
Oil on masonite board, 1974. 965x762 mm; 38x30 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Detroit-born painter and illustrator Arthur Roland grew up in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1930s and 40s, and later served in the Korean War. Roland studied art at Wayne State University and the Meinzinger School of the Art in Detroit. In 1974, he was listed in the directory of the Chicago Union of Black Artists, and by 1979, he was one of their elected officers. He later taught art at Wayne State Community College in Detroit. His artwork is found in the collections of the Arbor City Hall, the Archdiocese of Detroit, the Carnegie Institute, Howard University, the University of Southern Alabama, the Wayne County Comissioner's Office and many private collections. Swann Galleries sold the first painting of Arthur Roland at auction in our African American Art from Johnson Publishing Company auction on January 30, 2020.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
98
Jacob lawrence (1917 - 2000)
The Builders (The Family).
Color screenprint, 1974. 762x562 mm; 30x22⅛ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 45/300 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Ives-Sillman, New Haven, with the blind stamp lower right. Published by IBM Corporation, New York.
This screenprint was based on the painting illustrated on the catalogue cover of the artist’s 1974 retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Nesbett 74-1.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
99
Jacob lawrence (1917 - 2000)
Morning Still Life.
Color screenprint on Arches 88 paper, 1976. 610x445 mm; 24x17½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 47/200 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Soho Graphic Arts Workshop, New York, with the blind stamp lower left. Published by the Rainbow Art Foundation, New York. Nesbett L76-1.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Collection of the Ness Oleson Trust
The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA. They specialized in rare modern literary books by American and English writers. Their art collection includes works by both fine and self-taught African American artists.
100
Allan rohan crite (1910 - 2007)
Our Lady of the Neighborhood.
Pen and ink with watercolor additions on buff paper, 1948. 279x229 mm; 11x9 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right, and titled in pencil, lower margin.
This charming drawing of a black Madonna combines Crite's "Neighborhood Series" observations of African American life in Boston's Roxbury and South End districts with his interest in depicting Biblical narratives with black figures.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Beauford Delaney in 1951
In 1951, writer Brooks Atkinson noted, “No one knows exactly how Beauford lives. Pegging away at a style of painting that few people understand or appreciate, he has disciplined himself, not only physically but spiritually, to live with a kind of personal magnetism in a barren world.” Two years later, Delaney left New York for Paris.
Carl Van Vechten, Beauford Delaney. Carl Van Vechten Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust. © Van Vechten Trust.
101
Beauford delaney (1901 - 1979)
Untitled (Tent Interior).
Color pastels on thin tan wove paper, 1951. 457x610 mm; 18x24 inches. Signed and dated in pastel, lower left. With a partial sketch of a landscape in charcoal on the verso.
This beautiful, colorful drawing is a very scarce example of Beauford Delaney's modernist work in color pastels from the early 1950s, and shows his move toward abstraction at the time. In 1950, Beauford Delaney had a two month fellowship at Yaddo the artist and writer's colony near Sarasota Springs. The freedom and the camaraderie he experienced there increased both his affinity with abstraction and his interest in Paris. In 1951 he did several paintings and drawings that approached complete abstraction. Soon after Delaney decided to leave New York, and following his friend James Baldwin immigrated to Paris in 1953.
Delaney's landscapes in color pastels are seldom seen at auction. Swann sold another Delaney color pastel Greenhouse at Yaddo, 1950 in 2017. Two other early 1950s landscapes in color pastels were once in the collection of Delaney's friend, famed caricaturist Al Hirschfeld; one was sold at Doyle, New York in 2013, and another, also dated 1951, was sold at Cornette Saint Cyr, Paris in 2018.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
102
Elder r. clark
Untitled (The Eldorado, Daddy Grace)
Tempera on board, circa 1953. 508x406 mm; 20x16 inches. Signed in tempera, lower left.
Bishop Charles M. "Daddy" Grace (1881–1960), the founder of the United House of Prayer church, bought the iconic New York apartment building the Eldorado at 300 Central Park West in 1953. The controversial leader of the United House of Prayer was famous for his flamboyant and extravagant personal lifestyle - while building tremendous wealth for his church through commercial business investments and real estate holdings.
Provenance: Celia Bowers Antiques, Ithaca, NY, inscribed "North Carolina folk art" in ink on a label on the frame back; the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
103
Rex goreleigh (1902 - 1986)
Alain Locke.
Oil on linen canvas, 1974. 584x457 mm; 23x18 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Princeton Professor John Ralph Willis (1938 - 2007) commissioned this portrait of Alain Locke from his close friend Rex Goreleigh. Willis was an honorary secretary of Princeton University’s chapter of the Alain Locke Society. Goreleigh painted it after a 1943-44 portrait of Locke by Betsy Graves Reyneau (1888 - 1964) which is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution and was a gift from the Harmon Foundation. Goreleigh's painting is recorded in the Catalog of American Portraits, a research archive of the National Portrait Gallery.
Provenance: Professor John Ralph Willis, Princeton, NJ; Between the Covers Rare Books, Gloucester City, NJ; the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
104
Tom feelings (1933 - 2003)
Untitled (Young Boy).
Crayon on cream wove paper, circa 1975. 254x317 mm; 10x12 1/2 inches. Signed in pencil, lower center.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
105
Richard yarde (1939 - 2011)
Untitled (Yellow Wallpaper).
Watercolor on joined pieces of wove paper, 1978. 737x914 mm; 29x36 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right, and inscribed "Perry, With Affection, Richard" in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
106
Richard yarde (1939 - 2011)
Untitled.
Watercolor on joined sheets of wove paper, 1980. 584x305 mm; 23x12 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
107
Ralph c. hamm iii (1950 - )
I and I.
Acrylic on cotton canvas, 1982. 914x914 mm; 36x36 inches. Signed and dated in acrylic, lower left recto. Signed, titled, dated "3/19/1982" and inscribed "(acrylic on canvas)" in ink on the lower stretcher bar, verso.
A published poet, playwright, essayist, artist, musician, and author, Ralph C. Hamm III is a graduate of Boston University Metropolitan College, with degrees in liberal arts, divinity, metaphysics, and paralegal. Born on November 28, 1950 in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Hamm is serving a non-capital life sentence stemming from a 1968 criminal episode when he was seventeen years old. During his decades of imprisonment, he has also been an active leader in Massachusetts' prison reform movement.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
108
Mose ernest tolliver (1920 - 2006)
Untitled (Figure).
House paint on found plywood, circa 1985. Approximately 965x838 mm; 38x33 inches. Signed in paint, lower right
The son of an Alabama sharecropper and farm overseer, Mose Tolliver was the youngest of seven sons born into the Ike Tolliver family of twelve children. Living in Montgomery, married and raising his own family, Mose Tolliver began painting after a work accident left him handicapped in the mid 1960s. An early admirer who brought his work to public attention was Mitchell Kahan, former curator at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. In 1981, the museum mounted a one-man exhibition of Tolliver's work. He then was featured in Black Folk Art in America 1930-1980, the important national exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in 1983. He has since become one of the most enduring and widely collected self-taught artists of his generation, and painted actively until 2002.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
109
Winfred rembert (1945 - 2021)
Dolls Head Baseball.
Dyes on tooled and carved leather, circa 1990. 787x965 mm; 31x38 inches. Incised signature and title, lower right.
Winfred Rembert is an artist from Cuthbert, Georgia who lives and works in New Haven, CT. His artwork, painted on carved and tooled leather, displays memories of his youth—Black life in the Jim Crow South. His artistic vision calls forth vivid scenes from Georgia cotton fields and colorful characters from the juke joints and pool halls of Cuthbert. They also reveal his encounters with racial and police violence in the aftermath of a civil rights protest, and the seven years he spent on a Georgia chain gang. His paintings have been exhibited at museums and galleries around the country, including the Yale University Art Gallery, the Hudson River Museum, and The Adelson Galleries in New York. In 2011 Rembert was the subject of an award-winning documentary film, All Me: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert, by Vivian Ducat, and in 2015, Rembert was honored by Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative. Recently, in November, 2019, NPR also aired a segment produced by StoryCorps on the artist. Bio courtesy of the artist's website.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
110
Winfred rembert (1945 - 2021)
Inside Jeff’s Cafe.
Dyes on tooled and carved leather, circa 1997. 508x787 mm; 20x31 inches. Incised signature, lower left.
With a photocopy of a typed description on the frame back, dated September, 1997: "This is a typical scene at Jeff's Pool Room & Cafe, most any Friday or Saturday evening when Jeff's was crowded with people of all ages....Jeff's was the place to be if you thought you could dance....."
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
111
Winfred rembert (1945 - 2021)
Untitled (Classroom Scene).
Dyes on tooled and carved leather, circa 1997. 508x787 mm; 20x31 inches.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
112
Winfred rembert (1945 - 2021)
Untitled.
Dyes on tooled and carved leather, circa 1990. 330x228 mm; 13x9 inches. Incised initials, lower right.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
113
Willie massey (1906 - 1990)
Untitled (Airplane).
Mixed media assemblage, 1986. Appproximately 660 mm; 26 inches high. Signed in paint on the underside of the plane. Signed, dated and inscribed “Bowling Green, KY” in pencil on the underside of the base.
During the 70 years he worked as a tenant farmer, Willie Massey learned to make things to meet practical needs and to satisfy his creative energy. He began creating sculptures and paintings after his wife's death in 1955. He is well known for his colorful multilevel birdhouses made from old fruitcrates, his tinfoil birds and his airplanes. He died in 1990 as a result of burns suffered in a house fire. His art was included in the exhibitions African-American Folk Art in Kentucky,Passionate Visions of the American South, and others. His work is in many permanent collections, including the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Morris Museum of Art and the Kentucky Folk Art Center. Bio courtesy of the Gordon Gallery..
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
114
Mose ernest tolliver (1920 - 2006)
Untitled (Birdhouse).
Wood construction and house paint, circa 1985. Approximately 445x445x406 mm; 17 1/2 x17 1/2 x16 inches. Signed in paint (twice), roof edges.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
20th Century Contemporary
115
Frederick eversley (1941- )
Untitled.
Cast polyester, 1969. Approximately 190x38 mm; 7½ inches (diameter) x1½ inches (deep).
This captivating sculpture is a small but wonderful, early work by sculptor Fred Eversley. This translucent open disk in cast polyester with aqua and pink tones was made in the first years of what would become his trailblazing body of work in casting polyester. Eversley's innovative work made him a key figure in the developing art scene of postwar Los Angeles in the late 1960 and 70s.
Fred Eversley's beautiful sculptures are made from cast polyester resin, plastic and other synthetic materials - a pioneering practice which he developed based on his experiences and training as an engineer. From 1963 until 1967, Eversley was a senior project engineer at Wyle Laboratories, where he was responsible for supervising the design and construction of high-intensity acoustic and vibration test laboratories at NASA facilities. He attended Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, and then the University of Pennsylvania School of Bio-Medical Engineering. where he obtained his PhD. in 1963.
Eversley moved to Venice, California, in 1964 where he became friends with several Los Angeles artists. After a car accident, he retired from engineering in 1967, and become a full-time artist. Eversley's first solo exhibition was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1970, and he became the first artist-in-residence at the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum in 1977. Eversley has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA in 2017 and Art + Practice, Los Angeles in 2016. His work is now in the permanent collections of dozens of museums; including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Yale University Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Provenance: the Ness Oleson Trust. The late Frannie Ness and Gary Oleson were the proprietors of Waiting for Godot Books of Hadley, MA, which specialized in rare American and English books, including African American literature.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
116
William t. williams (1942 - )
HKL Portfolio.
Set of four color screenprints on Rives BFK paper, 1970. Each 413x295 mm; 16¼x11⅝ inches, full margins. Each signed and numbered 83/144 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Charles Cardinale, Fine Creations, Inc., New York. Published by HKL, Ltd., New York. With the justification page.
Other portfolios are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the National Gallery, Washington, DC. The publisher HKL, Ltd. was created by Portia Harcus, Barbara Krakow and Vera List.
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
117
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Untitled (Abstraction in Red and Blue).
Oil on thick wove paper, circa 1973. 736x1041 mm; 29x41 inches. Signed in ink, lower right.
This large work on paper is an excellent example of Norman Lewis's final body of work in abstraction. Norman Lewis added more high key and saturated colors in his painting after a visit with his wife Ouida to Jack Whitten's residence in Crete in the summer of 1973. The development of the Seachange series with more abstract compositions of vibrating, concentric circles followed in 1975. That year he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and the following year in the fall of 1976, Lewis had his first retrospective, with 63 artworks included in Norman Lewis: A Retrospective, at The Graduate School and University Center of City College, New York. Fine pp. 181, 245-46 and 267.
Provenance: private collection, New York; thence by descent to a private collection, California.
Estimate
$50,000 – $75,000
118
Robert james reed, jr. (1938 - 2015)
Plum Nellie - Norfolk Suite.
Acrylic with embossing on cream wove paper, 1975. 381x483 mm; 15x19 inches. Signed, dated "Aug - 1975" and titled in pencil, lower margin.
Provenance: private collection, Minnesota.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
119
Ed clark (1926 - 2019)
Untitled (Yucatan Series).
Color intaglio relief on coated cream wove paper, 1976. 543x771 mm; 21¾x28 inches, wide margins. Artist’s proof, aside from the edition of 12. Signed, titled, and inscribed “A/P” and “To Rick” in ink, lower margin. Printed at Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop, New York.
This impressive print is a rare artist’s proof from Ed Clark’s 1976-77 Yucatan series.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
120
Mcarthur binion (1946 - )
Untitled.
Color lithograph on wove paper, 1980. 584x762 mm; 23x30 inches (sheet). Signed, dated and numbered 29/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by the Hollaender Press, New York. Published by the artist and Hollaender Press, New York.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
121
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Buoy Landscape III, IV, and V.
Color relief print, etching, screenprint, drypoint, aquatint and roulette on handmade wove paper, 1982. Each 807x610 mm; 31¾x24 inches (sheet). Each signed, titled, dated and inscribed 12/25 in pencil, lower center. Published by Vermillion Editions Limited, Minneapolis.
Three prints from the set of five prints - the complete set Buoy Landscape I-V is in the collections of the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
122
Howardena pindell (1943- )
Oval Memory Series: (Rhinoceros) Heaven.
Tempera, gouache, postcards, punched paper, nails, fluorescent paint, glitter and thread on board, 1980-81. Approximately 330x560 mm; 13x22 inches; 668x412x102 mm; 26¼x16¼x4 inches (including Plexiglass box). Signed and dated "1980-81" in pencil, lower right on the mount.
Exhibited: Lerner-Heller Gallery, New York, 1981, with the gallery label on the frame back.
Born in Philadelphia, Howardena Pindell pursued her passion in art from a young age, with extensive lessons in fine art. She received a BFA from Boston University in 1965, and an MFA from Yale University in 1967. Pindell moved to New York, and began working in the Art's Education Department at the Museum of Modern Art. Howardena Pindell first engaged with hole-punched circles by counting and numbering each one, then placed them over a gridded form — often the lines of graph paper — and added embellishments such as acrylic, watercolor, glitter, and even baby powder.
Pindell's affinity with numbers and grids grew from the influence of her father — a mathematician who often wrote down figures in a gridded journal. In 1972, Pindell was one of 22 co-founders of the A.I.R. Gallery in New York, which was the first artist-directed gallery for women artists in the United States. By 1977, she was appointed associate curator in the Prints and Drawings Department at MoMA.
In 1979, just when she was beginning the next phase of her career as a professor of art at SUNY, Stony Brook, Pindell was injured in a serious car accident that left her with acute memory loss. Her subsequent 1980-81 Oval Memory series transformed postcards saved from her global travels into elaborate assemblages that helped reconstruct her memories.
This beautiful example of the Howardena Pindell's Oval Memory Series assemblage is the first of this important series to come to auction. Her Autobiography: Oval Memory #1 is in the collection of the artist; Oval Memory Series II: Castle Dragon. is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Provenance: private collection, Los Angeles (1981); thence by descent, private collection, New York.
Estimate
$50,000 – $75,000
123
Delilah w. pierce (1904 - 1992)
Nebulae Patterns, #2.
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1982. 609x406 mm; 20x18 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. Signed, titled and dated in ink, verso on the upper stretcher bar.
Delilah Pierce emerged as a pioneering abstract painter and part of the Washington, DC school of color field painting in the late 1950s. Born in Washington, DC, she received her bachelor's degree from Howard University, where she studied under Loïs Mailou Jones and James Lesesne Wells, then attained a master's degree from Columbia University. Active as both an artist and art educator, she exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Barnett-Aden Gallery in Washington, DC through the late 1960s. Her paintings were in both the Barnett-Aden and the Evan-Tibbs collections, and are now in the permanent collections of the Howard University Art Gallery and the University of the District of Columbia.
Provenance: Galerie Myrtis, Baltimore, MD; private collection, California.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
124
Willie wayne young (1942 - )
Untitled.
Pencil on cream wove paper, 1976, 610x457 mm; 24x18 inches. Initialed "W.W.Y." and dated in pencil, lower right.
Over a remarkable six-decade career, working exclusively in graphite on paper, Willie Wayne Young has created an impressive body of work centered around his love of drawing. He has investigated the infinite possibilities found in the abstraction of organic forms and imaginary landscapes. One can immediately see how deliberately and delicately considered these artworks are. Young draws with a pocketknife sharpened pencil and often a magnifying glass.
Largely a self-taught artist, the Dallas native's talent was first noticed as a teenager when Young participated in local artist Chapman Kelley's studio group from 1959 until 1963. Living and working in Dallas his entire life, Young did not receive national attention until his first solo exhibition in 1993 at the Ricco/Maresca Gallery of New York, followed by another solo show in 1994 at the Goldie Paley Gallery at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia. Young's drawings soon were included by curators in several institutional exhibitions; including the 1995 A World of Their Own: Twentieth Century American Folk Art at the Newark Museum, and the 1996 A Labor of Love curated by Marcia Tucker at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. In 2009, the African American Museum of Dallas gave Young his first retrospective, curated by Edleeca Thompson, The Visionary Art of Willie Young. Then more recently, in 2015 Young's work was included in Inside the Outside: Five Self-Taught Artists from the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation at the Katonah Museum of Art, New York, a nationally traveling exhibition.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; property from the Willie Young Collection LP, a partnership managed by the Louis-Dreyfus Family.
Estimate
$1,200 – $1,800
125
Willie wayne young (1942 - )
Untitled.
Pencil on wove paper, 1981, 610x457 mm; 24x18 inches. Initialed "W.W.Y." and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; property from the Willie Young Collection LP, a partnership managed by the Louis-Dreyfus Family.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
126
Betye saar (1926 - )
Keep for Old Memoirs.
Offset lithograph on cream wove paper, 1976. 356x457 mm; 14x18 inches. Artist’s proof, aside from the edition of 250. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right and inscribed “AP” in pencil, lower left. Printed and published by Cirrus Editions, Los Angeles.
Estimate
$1,200 – $1,800
127
Dindga mccannon (1947 - )
International Benin Awards 1979.
Linoleum cut on cream Japan paper, 1979. 298x394 mm; 11¾x15½ inches, full margins. Signed, dated and numbered (3/6 and 5/8) twice in pencil, lower margin.
The International Benin Award was an award given by the Benin people of West Africa for cultural services to the artist community in the 1970s. Artists McCannon and Ademola Olugebefola made prints as a mock up for this award - likely submissions for a design competition.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
128
Emma amos (1938 - 2020)
Woman with Hat.
Color etching on wove paper, 1979. 762x565 mm; 30x22¼ inches, wide margins. Signed, titled and numbered 33/35 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
129
Ernest crichlow (1914 - 2005)
Young Lady in Yellow Dress.
Color etching and aquatint, 1979. 552x425 mm; 21¾x16¾ inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 15/100 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
130
Louis delsarte (1944 - 2020)
Josephine Baker.
Oil on cotton canvas, circa 1979. 610x457 mm; 24x18 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, New York; private collection, New York.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
131
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Out Chorus.
Color screenprint, with extensive hand coloring in watercolor, 1979-80. 311x413 mm; 12¼x16¼ inches, full margins. A hors commence impression, aside from the numbered edition of 200. Signed, inscribed “HC” and numbered 10/12 in pencil, lower margin. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#97.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
132
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Tenor Sermon.
Oil monotype on heavy wove paper, 1979. 560x762 mm; 22½x30 inches; full margins. Signed in pencil, upper right.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
133
Dindga mccannon (1947 - )
Black Family.
Oil, metallic paint and fabric collage on canvas, 1980. 609x559 mm; 24x22 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, New York; private collection, New York.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
134
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Family (Mother and Child).
Color screenprint, 1980. 749x533 mm; 29½x21 inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 170/180 in pencil, lower margin. Not in Gelburd/Rosenberg.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
135
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Firebirds.
Color lithograph, 1980. 547x380 mm; 21½x15 inches, full margins. Printer’s proof, aside from the edition of 300. Signed and inscribed “PP” in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Atelier Ettinger, New York, with the blind stamp lower right. Published by Transworld Art, New York, with the blind stamp lower left. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#83.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
136
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Autumn of the Rooster.
Color lithograph on Arches paper, 1983. 429x572 mm; 16⅞x22½ inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 31/175 in pencil, lower margin. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#109.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
137
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Obeah Woman with her daughter (La Sorcière avec sa fille)..
Watercolor on wove paper, circa 1984. 762x560 mm; 30x22 inches. Signed in faint watercolor and re-signed in pencil, lower left recto. Titled in pencil, lower right verso.
Romare Bearden's Obeah watercolors are an important series in the artist's late career. They represent both a culmination of his artistic freedom and expression in the medium, and his awareness of the traditions of his second home on the Caribbean island of St. Martin. The role of the Obeah is a well-known part of Afro-Caribbean communities and cultural history - typically, a woman who practices spiritual, herbal and mystical healing in her villlage.
Provenance: Seth Taffae Fine Art, New York; private collection, Michigan; the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, October 5, 2018.
Estimate
$35,000 – $50,000
138
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Caribbean Landscape.
Color lithograph, 1983-85. 755x1072 mm; 29 ⅝x42⅛ inches. Artist's proof, aside from the edition of 200. Signed, inscribed "AP" and numbered VI in pencil, center right.
A very good, vibrant impression of this scarce, large lithograph. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#98.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
139
Loïs mailou jones (1905 - 1998)
Untitled (Haitian Landscape).
Watercolor on wove paper, 1984. 457x610 mm; 18x24 inches. Signed, dated and inscribed "Haiti" in watercolor, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Louisiana.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
140
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
The Balance.
Oil on cotton canvas, 1981. 584x838 mm; 23x33 inches. Signed in oil, lower left.
The Balance is a beautiful and evocative painting that demonstrates Lee-Smith's continued exploration of both surrealism and the depiction of modern isolation into his late career. As depicted in his The Juggler #1. 1961, collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Two Boys, 1968, collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Lee-Smith continues to develop the symbolic imagery of balancing with figures standing on top of concrete walls in his paintings.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner.
Estimate
$25,000 – $35,000
141
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Standing Mother and Child.
Cast bronze on a wooden base, 1980. Approximately 432x127x102 mm; 17x5x4 inches (not including the base). Edition of 13. Incised initials "EC" on the verso.
Provenance: the artist; Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans; private collection, California.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
142
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Survivor.
Linoleum cut on cream wove paper, 1983. 242x187 mm; 9½x7 ⅛ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 733/1000 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
143
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Blues.
Color offset lithograph on cream wove paper, 1983. 699x451 mm; 27½x17¾ inches, full margins. Artist proof, aside from an edition of 130. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered "AP" in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia..
Another impression was included in the 2010 Beyond The Blues exhibition of the collection of the Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, and is reproduced on the cover of the catalogue. Edmunds pl. 171; p. 135.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
144
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
On The Subway.
Offset lithograph on cream wove paper, 1986. 420x285 mm; 16½x11 ⅛ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 121/300 in pencil, lower right.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
145
John biggers (1924 - 2001)
Black Family (Family of Six).
Lithograph, 1986. 686x813 mm; 27x32 inches, wide margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 13/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop, New York.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
146
Frank w. wimberley (1926 - )
Blue Edge.
Acrylic on wove paper, 1986. 641x508 mm; 25¼x24 inches. Signed and dated in acrylic, upper right recto. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "25¼x24 inches" in ink on the verso.
Provenance: private collection, New York; thence by descent, private collection, California.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
147
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
In Celebration.
Color screenprint on wove paper, 1987. 775x965 mm; 30½x38 inches. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 87/150 in pencil, lower edge
Another impression of this print is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
148
Ed clark (1926 - 2019 )
Untitled (Bahia Series).
Acrylic and natural pigment on cotton canvas, 1988. 508x610 mm; 20x24 inches. Signed and dated in acrylic, verso.
This vibrant canvas is from the artist's 1988 Bahia series. Inspired by a visit to Jack Whitten in Crete in 1971, Ed Clark began to travel to various foreign countries to paint - including Nigeria, Martinique, Brazil and Morocco - through the 1980s. Another work from this series in the collection of the Museu de Arte Moderna Bahia.
Ed Clark was a trailblazing, important international figure in post-war and contemporary abstract painting over a sixty year career. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1946 to 1951, and in 1952 at the Academy de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where he lived until 1958. George Sugarman then persuaded him to return to New York to help found the Brata Gallery with Ronald Bladen, Al Held and others. Clark showed there until 1966, when he returned to France for three more years. He has acknowledged the influence of the paintings of Nicolas de Stael and the music of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, and later the gestural abstractions of Hans Hartung and Pierre Soulages. He exhibited widely internationally and his paintings are in numerous institutional collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, Detroit Institute of the Arts, Museum of Modern Art, Pérez Art Museum, Saint Louis Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Provenance: private collection, New York; thence by descent to a private collection, California.
Estimate
$50,000 – $75,000
149
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Violin Strings.
Goauche, watercolor, crayon, graphite and collage of various printed papers on paper, 1988. 465x650 mm; 18¼x25½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Netherlands.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
150
Howardena pindell (1943 - )
Flight/Fields.
Color lithograph with etching and collage, 1988-89. 495x584 mm; 19½x23 inches, full margins. Signed, dated, titled and numbered 26/30 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Solo Impressions, Inc., New York, with the blind stamp lower right. Published by Mezzanine Gallery, Delaware, with the blind stamp lower left margin, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Another impression is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
151
Frank w. wimberley (1926 - )
Rouge.
Acrylic on cotton canvas, 1990. 1168x1168 mm; 46x46 inches. Signed and dated in acrylic, lower right recto. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "46x46 inches" on the stretcher bar, verso.
Born in Pleasantville, NJ, Frank Wimberley has produced a significant body of work in abstraction in paint and collage. Wimberley studied art with James Porter, Loïs Mailou Jones, and James Wells at Howard University. While a student, he also played jazz and later developed friendships with musicians such as Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, and Ron Carter in New York, who also informed his creative sensibility. He received the Pollack/Kranser fellowship in 1998. Wimberley had a solo exhibition at Spanierman Gallery, East Hampton, NY in 2008, and has had recent solo exhibitions at the Islip Art Museum, June Kelly Gallery, New York and Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY. His works are found in the permanent collections of the Parrish Art Museum, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Yale University Art Gallery.
Provenance: private collection, New York; thence by descent, private collection, California.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
152
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Lightning Bolt.
Color collagraph and screenprint on blue handmade paper, 1992. 635x635 mm; 25x25 inches. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 45/75 in pencil, lower edge.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
153
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Promise.
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 1989. 590x432 mm; 23¼x17 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 67/100 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by J.K. Fine Arts, New York, with the blind stamp, lower left.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
154
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Untitled (Man with Target on Shirt).
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1990. 457x559 mm; 30x35 inches.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner.
Estimate
$25,000 – $35,000
155
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Untitled (Five on the Beach).
Watercolor on wove paper, 1994. 356x508 mm; 14x20 inches. With the estate's ink stamp, on the verso.
Exhibited: Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
156
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Untitled (Two Abstract Masks and Screen).
Watercolor on wove paper, circa 1993-9. 470x616 mm; 18¼x24¼ inches (sheet). Signed in ink, lower right.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
157
Jacob lawrence (1917 - 2000)
The First Book of Moses Called Genesis.
Bound volume with complete text and 8 color screenprints on Whatman Print Matt paper, 1989-90. 498x365 mm; 19 ⅝x14 ⅜ inches, full margins, bound as issued.
One of 400 signed and numbered sets. Signed and numbered 259 in pencil on the colophon. Printed by George Drexel, Osiris Screen Printing, New York. Published by the Limited Editions Club, New York.
Superb impressions with bright and vibrant colors. In the original black linen-covered clamshell box. Nesbett L90-2.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
158
Carrie mae weems (1953 - )
High Yella Girl.
Toned gelatin silver print, with Prestype and frame, 1989. 779x781 mm; 30 ⅝x30¾ inches, including the frame. Edition of 3. From the Colored People series.
High Yella Girl is a significant and very scarce work from the artist's important 1988-89 series. Weems focuses on the cultural emphasis that has been placed on African Americans' skin color and the divisions it causes. This idea is further developed with Weems' use of a bright yellow tone - it highlights how our perceptions of color and race are conditioned by artificial standards. The artist printed another edition of 5 in 1997.
Provenance: the artist, New York; P.P.O.W., New York; private collection, New York..
Estimate
$50,000 – $75,000
159
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
A Second Generation.
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 1992. 397x346 mm; 15 ⅝x13 ⅝ inches, full margins. A hors commerce impression, aside from the edition of 99. Signed, dated, inscribed “HC” and numbered II in pencil, lower margin. Printed by J. K. Fine Art Editions, Union City, NJ. Published by The Limited Editions Club, New York. From For My People.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
160
Betye saar (1926 - )
Return to Dreamtime.
Color intaglio and screenprint on Rives BFK paper, 1990. 756x568 mm; 29¾x22 ⅜ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 73/75 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
161
Betye saar (1926 - )
Hoo Doo #19.
Mixed media assemblage on board, 1992. 240x191 mm; 9½x7½ inches. Signed, titled and dated in white crayon, verso. From the Hoo Doo series.
Since the 1970s, Betye Saar has been creating images that reflects the spirtualism of her ancestors, including hoodoo, the varied spiritual practices brought by enslaved Africans to the United States. In 2006, curator Franklin Sirmans organized the Menil Foundation's exhibition NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith of contemporary artists including the work of Betye Saar.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, California (1998); thence by descent to the current owner, California (2005).
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
162
Betye saar (1926 - )
Sojourn.
Mixed media assemblage in a wooden box, 1995. 305x206x57 mm; 12x8 ⅛x2¼ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right verso, and titled in ink, lower left verso.
Exhibited: Betye Saar: Personal Icons, Women and Their Work: Bold About Art, Austin, TX, Jun 21, 1996 - Sat Aug 10, 1996, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE, August 31 - October 13, 1996 (exhibition travelled to Desaisset Museum, Santa Clara, CA; The University Art Museum, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM; Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass Village, CO).
Illustrated: Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins. Betye Saar: Personal Icons, p. 22.
Betye Saar's Sojourn is an excellent, evocative collage of carefully selected objects steeped in symbolic meaning. In her exhibition essay, LeFalle-Collins notes how Saar uses the plush surface of the tapestry in Sojourn to construct an intimate interior and a spiritual space. The striking central imagery of the messenger bird flying while shackled in chains symbolizes the obstacles faced by African Americans in their pursuit of freedom. LeFalle-Collins p. 44.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, California (1997); thence by descent to the current owner, California (2005).
Estimate
$25,000 – $35,000
163
Jonathan green (1955 - )
Father and Son.
Color lithograph on Arches paper, 1993. 431x330 mm; 17x13 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 148/250 in pencil, lower margin. Published by Mojo Portfolio, Union City, NJ, with the blindstamp, lower left.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
164
Ronald adams (1934 - )
Endangered Species.
Etching in brown on cream wove paper, 1991. 603x445 mm; 23¾x17½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 14/60 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by Hand Graphics, Santa Fe, NM, with the blind stamp lower right.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
165
Louis delsarte (1944 - 2020)
The Dance.
Mixed media on wove paper, 1993. 343x305 mm; 13½x12 inches. Signed and dated in gouache, lower right, and titled in ink, lower margin.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
166
Varnette p. honeywood (1950 - 2010)
Untitled (Uncle).
Collage of various color and printed papers, 1994. 216x267 mm; 8½ x10½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
The artist told the owner that this collage was an homage to a certain uncle of hers.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, California.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
167
Faith ringgold (1930 - )
Groovin’ High.
Color screenprint, 1996. 605x975 mm; 23¾x38½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, and numbered 420/425 in pencil, lower margin.
This large print is after the same-titled painted quilt of 1986, which is in the collection of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
168
Samella lewis (1924 - )
Cleo
Offset color lithograph, 1996. 698x514 mm; 27½x20¼ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 12/100 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop, Philladelphia.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
169
David hammons (1943 - )
The Man Nobody Killed.
Stencilled paint and collage printed on commercially printed cardboard, 1986. 280x216 mm; 11x8½ inches. Edition of 200. From Cobalt Myth Mechanics, 1986/1987, Eye Magazine, #14. Published by Eye Publications, New York.
While from an edition, each printing of The Man Nobody Killed is a unique variation. Each also were printed on different found cardboard material, sometimes with additional printed surfaces or collaged material. Another impression is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The subject of the work is Michael Stewart, a New York artist who died as a result of injuries sustained while in police custody following an arrest by the New York City Transit Police.
The artist Michael Stewart and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting The Death of Michael Stewart (Defacement) were the subject of the recent exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Basquiat’s “Defacement”: the Untold Story, June 21 - November 6, 2019. The exhibition included The MoMA impression of this print alongside artworks by Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, George Condo and Lyle Ashton Harris. It was organized by guest curator Chaédria LaBouvier - the first African American curator of an exhibition at the museum.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
170
Dawoud bey (1953 - )
Damian.
Set of four unique Polaroids, mounted, circa 1995. 1219x1016 mm; 48x41 inches (total). Each 610x520 mm; 24x20½ inches. Signed in ink on the gallery label on the verso.
Provenance: Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago, with the gallery label, verso; private collection, New York.
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
171
Kerry james marshall (1955 - )
Brownie.
Color lithograph, 1995. 503x381mm; 19¾x15 inches. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 8/50 in pencil, lower edge. Printed and published by Anchor Graphics, Chicago.
Other impressions are in the collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
172
Kara walker (1969 - )
Untitled (Lincoln).
Gouache on wove paper, 1997. 1651x1080 mm; 65x42¼ inches. Initialed and dated in pencil, upper right verso.
This large work on paper is a significant early work by Kara Walker. While Walker is best known for her cut paper silhouettes, drawing is at the core of her artistic practice. In 1997, Kara Walker became the youngest recipient of the the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award, known as the MacArthur “genius” grant, at the age of 27. The same year, Walker also had her first traveling solo institutional exhibition Presenting Negro Scenes Drawn Upon My Passage Through the South and Reconfigured for the Benefit of Enlightened Audiences Wherever Such May Be Found, By Myself, Missus K.E.B. Walker, Colored. originating at the Renaissance Society, the University of Chicago. Just three years earlier, Kara Walker had completed her MFA degree from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Provenance: Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NY, with gallery label on the frame back; private collection, Illlinois; private collection, Pennsylvania (2020).
Estimate
$35,000 – $50,000
173
Kara walker (1969 - )
Freedom, A Fable: A Curious Interpretation of the Wit of a Negress in Troubled Times.
Bound pop-up book, with offset lithographs and five laser-cut, pop-up silhouettes on wove paper, 1997. 238x213 mm; 9 ⅜x8 ⅜ inches, full red leather binding as issued. Edition of 4000.
Each year, the Peter Norton family commissions an art edition to celebrate the Christmas season and holidays. The book was privately published and gifted to friends. Another copy of this book is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Through the use of a pop-up book, Kara Walker takes a medium typically relegated to young children’s entertainment, and writes of a “soon-to-be emancipated 19th century Negress.” What begins as a seemingly hopeful tale of a free life written in the mode of a fairy tale, Walker’s prose quickly mimics her dark and provocative imagery, detailing the racial and sexual horrors that awaited a young African-American woman in the 19th century.
Estimate
$2,500 – $3,500
174
Kara walker (1969 - )
The Emancipation Approximation (Scene #26).
Color screenprint on Somerset 500 gram paper, 2000. 1118x864 mm; 44x34 inches. Initialed, dated and numbered II/XXV in pencil, verso. Printed by Jean Yves Noblet, New York. Published by Sikkema Jenkins Editions, New York. From The Emancipation Approximation portfolio.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
175
Kehinde wiley (1977 - )
Untitled (Self-Portrait).
Graphite, watercolor, and ink wash on wove paper, 1998. 610x457 mm; 24x18 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Kehinde Wiley drew this striking self-portrait when he was a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. Born in Los Angeles, California in 1977, Wiley's father is Yoruba from Nigeria, and his mother is African-American. In high school, Wiley gained critical attention with a series of paintings of African women in tribal and regional costume. In 1998, he began his Limbo series of surreal portrait paintings while earning his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. He graduated in the spring of 1999, and entered the MFA program at Yale University that fall.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; C. C. H. Pounder, Pounder-Kone Art Space, Los Angeles (circa 2000); private collection New York (2005).
Estimate
$25,000 – $35,000
176
Melvin edwards (1937 - )
Untitled (Self-Portrait).
Intaglio on Arches paper, circa 1998. 500x635 mm; 20x26 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 34/100 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
177
Evangeline j. montgomery (1930 - )
Sunset.
Offset color lithograph, 1997. 546x762 mm; 21½x30 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 12/17 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
An impression is in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum; another was included in the 2017 exhibition Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri.
Throughout her life, Montgomery has dedicated herself to the arts - whether by executing works in enamel, metalwork, fiber art, acrylic, oil, and print, or by serving tirelessly as a curator and in various roles of arts advocacy. Her work in etching, lithography, and monoprint represents an abstract exploration of color, form, and nature presented in a wide range of media.
Evangeline Montgomery was born in New York City in 1933. In 1955, she moved to Los Angeles where she worked for Thomas Usher, an African American jewelry designer. She attended Los Angeles City College and went on to earn a BFA from the California College of Arts & Crafts where she specialized in metallurgy. In 1967, Montgomery began working as an independent curator - throughout her career, she has organized more than 150 exhibitions in museums, university galleries, and art centers. She served as the curator for the Rainbow Sign Gallery in Berkeley, California. Later, as Black Arts Consultant for the Oakland Museum, she curated an important retrospective of Sargent Johnson, the exhibition California Black Craftsmen and built their collection of African American art. Between 1976 and 1979, she served as the San Francisco Art Commissioner. She moved to Washington D.C. in 1980 to pursue a career with the Department of State as a program development officer for Arts America.
Provenance: the estate of the artist.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
178
Ellen gallagher (1965 - )
Untitled.
Color woodcut, etching, aquatint and screenprint on Japon nacre paper, 1997. 1006x573 mm; 39½x26½ inches. With the embossed siganture, lower right. Dated and numbered 17/25 in pencil, lower left.
Ellen Gallagher is an abstract painter and multimedia artist creating minimalist work with subject narratives. Her influences include the paintings of Agnes Martin and the repetitive writings of Gertrude Stein. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Gallagher attended Oberlin College, Ohio; the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (graduating in 1992 and receiving a traveling scholar award in 1993); and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (1993).
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
179
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Richer Scene.
Acrylic and polypropylene on collaged cotton canvas, 1998. 1016x1016x75 mm; 40x40x3 inches, with bevelled edges on three sides. Signed, dated and titled in ink on the stretcher bars verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, California; the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, October 8, 2019.
Estimate
$80,000 – $120,000
180
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Untitled (Trio).
Three acrylic on birch plywood constructions, 1999. Each approximately 102x102x114 mm; 4x4x4½ inches. Each signed and dated '"99" in ink on the verso.
Provenance: aquired directly from the artist; private collection, Maryland.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
181
Alvin d. loving, jr. (1935 - 2005)
Mara, Mara.
Color offset lithograph, 2002. 711x540 mm; 28x21¼ inches. Artist’s proof, aside from an unknown edition. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed “Artist’s Proof” in pencil, lower edge.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
182
Loïs mailou jones (1905-1998)
Veve Vodou III.
Color screenprint on paper, 1997. 813x1016 mm; 32x40 inches, full margins. Printer’s proof, aside from the edition of 150. Signed, titled, dated, inscribed “PP” and numbered 8/10 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Lou Stovall at the Workshop, Inc., Washington, DC, with blind stamp, lower left.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
21st Century Contemporary
183
Victor davson (1948 - )
Bad Cow Comin’ (Remember Martin Carter).
Oil and wax on heavy wove paper, 1999. 965x1270 mm; 38x50 inches.
Victor Davson was born in Georgetown, Guyana and received a BFA degree from Pratt Institute (1980), Brooklyn, New York. He was the co-founder of Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, with artist Carl E. Hazlewood in Newark, NJ, in 1983, and served as its founding director until 2016. Davson's thinking is heavily influenced by the anti-colonial politics of the Caribbean and the intellectuals of that period. These include writers and activists like Aimé Césaire, Martin Carter, Frantz Fanon and Walter Rodney. Since 1996, his series of paintings, Bad Cow Comin' is his attempt to negotiate the roots of identity in a terrain of loss and desire - it is a response to strong memories from his childhood in Guyana of performances in which men masqueraded from house to house on Christmas Day. These carnivalesque characters serve as metaphors for the people of the African Diaspora who survived transatlantic slavery because of their resiliency.
“The visual and the performative in the Caribbean are explicitly linked; the brilliance and innovation of the costumes are tied to the music and the meaning of the performance. Masking traditions embody both the colonizer and the colonized. In them we witness both “civilized” European and “savage” African religious expressions; the maintenance of the status quo, and the opposition to it that is expressed in ritual defiance. There is menace in the air, and there is exuberance. Davson can still hear the pitch and rattle of the kettle drum in his head.” —Belinda Edmondson Ph.D.
Provenance: private collection, New Jersey.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
184
Rashid johnson (1977 - )
Beans.
Van Dyke Brown photo-emulsion print on heavy wove paper, 1999. 685x635 mm; 27x25 inch (sheet). Signed in pencil, lower right verso and initialed in pencil, lower right, recto.
Provenance: acquired at Leslie Hindman, Chicago, May 3, 2012; private collection, Maryland.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
185
Barkley l. hendricks (1945 - 2017)
YS Falls #41.
Oil on linen canvas, 2002. 305 mm; 12 inches diameter (tondo). Signed in oil, lower right recto. Signed, titled, dated "Jan. 4, 2002" and inscribed "Jamaica, W.I." in ink on the frame back.
Provenance: Sande Webster Gallery, Philadelphia, with the label on the frame back; private collection, California.
Estimate
$20,000 – $30,000
186
Leroy w. allen (1958 - 2007)
Sun Drops.
Watercolor on wove paper, 2001. 737x533 mm; 29x21 inches. Signed, dated and inscribed "©" and "NWS" in ink, lower right.
Exhibited: Mississipi Museum of Art, Jackson MS.
Born in Kansas City, Leroy Allen attended the University of Kansas, Lawrence School of Design, with honors. Upon graduation, Allen became an artist at Hallmark Cards and also studied fine art at the Kansas City Art Institute. In 1999, Allen along with other artists organzied an exhibition, The Kansas City Six Reunion, which celebrated the art achievements of six artists who shared careers at Hallmark Cards. Allen became a signature member of the National Watercolor Society (NWS), the American Watercolor Society (AWS), the California Watercolor Society and the Kansas Watercolor Society. His work has been exhibited in Black Romantic (The Figurative Impulsive of African American Art), at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Provenance: Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans; private collection, Florida; the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, April 5, 2018.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
187
Dawoud bey (1953- )
A Girl in Hyde Park, Chicago.
Chromogenic print, 2001. 508x406 mm; 20x16 inches. Signed, dated “2001/2003” and numbered 8/25 in ink, verso. Printed in 2003. Published by amfAR, New York.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
188
Richard wyatt, jr. (1955- )
Don’t F… With Me Today.
Acrylic on cotton canvas, 2003. 660x813 mm; 26x32 inches. Signed and dated in acrylic, lower right.
Exhibited: About Face, Steve Turner Fine Art, Los Angeles. February 26 - April 9, 2005.
Don't F... With Me Today is an excellent example of the powerful realism of Richard Wyatt. For more than 30 years, this Los Angeles artist has actively produced art for public and corporate spaces which have been featured in publications, films, television, and documentaries throughout the world. In 1996, Wyatt was commissioned to create the City of Dreams, River of History mural at the historic landmark Union Station, Los Angeles, CA. In 2010, Wyatt (in collaboration with May Sun) completed a public commission for the historic Robert F. Kennedy Monument located at the former Ambassador Hotel site on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles, CA. In 2012, he restored his iconic Hollywood Jazz: 1945-1972 mural in ceramic tile at the Capitol Records building in Hollywood, CA.
In addition, Wyatt has produced a significant body of smaller scale paintings and drawings. Before earning his BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Richard Wyatt's art education began in the mid-1960s at the Watts Towers Art Center and the Studio Watts Workshop. He also attended the Tutor Art Program led by William Pajaud which met on Saturdays at the Otis Art Institute and where Wyatt began studying, drawing and painting with Charles White. Recently in 2019, Wyatt's work was recently included in the Los Angeles County of Museum of Art exhibition Life Model: Charles White and His Students, a companion exhibition to Charles White: A Retrospective.
Provenance: Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles; private collection (2005).
Estimate
$20,000 – $30,000
189
Faith ringgold (1930 - )
Somebody Stole My Broken Heart.
Acrylic and pen and ink on wove paper, 2004. 610x457 mm; 24x18 inches. Signed, dated and numbered "#1" in ink, lower right.
With this work on paper, Faith Ringgold depicts the first panel of her 2004 Jazz Stories: Mama can Sing, Papa can Blow series of story quilts. The quilt series was the subject of a solo exhibition at ACA Galleries, New York in January 2005. She also made two versions in color screenprint in 2004 and 2007 - impressions are in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Provenance: ACA Gallery, New York; private collection, Florida (2006); the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, April 5, 2018.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
190
Faith ringgold (1930 - )
Aunt Emmy.
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 2005. 762x559 mm; 30x22 inches, full margins. Printer's proof, aside from the edition of 90. Signed, dated and inscribed "PP" in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Segura Art Studios, Notre Dame Center for Arts & Culture, with the blind stamp lower right.
Based on the 2005 same-titled quit from Faith Ringgold's Coming to Jones Road #7 series.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
191
Faith ringgold (1930 - )
Under a Blood Red Sky, # 7.
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 2006. 762x1067 mm; 30x42 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 2/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Segura Art Studios, Notre Dame Center for Arts & Culture, with the blind stamp lower right.
Based on the 2005 same-titled quit from Faith Ringgold's Coming to Jones Road #7 series.
Estimate
$2,500 – $3,500
192
Faith ringgold (1930 - )
To Be Or Not To Be Free.
Color lithograph on dyed BFK Rives paper, 2014. 762x559 mm; 33¾x26½ inches, full margins. Signed, dated, and numbered 56/60 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Segura Art Studios, Notre Dame Center for Arts & Culture, with the blind stamp lower right.
Based on the 2005 same-titled quit from Faith Ringgold's Coming to Jones Road #7 series. Another impression of this print is in the collection of the Snite Museum of Art, the University of Notre Dame.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
193
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Mimi.
Linoleum cut on Imawi paper, mounted to Somerset edition paper, 2007. 203x254 mm; 8x10 inches, full margins. Signed, dated and numbered 31/90 in pencil, lower margin. Publishing by Segura Publishing Company, Tempe, AZ.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
194
David c. driskell (1931 - 2020)
The Bassist.
Color lithograph, 2006. 760x540 mm; 29¾x21¼ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 60/80 in white ink, lower edge. Printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
195
David c. driskell (1931 - 2020)
Her Hat was Her Halo.
Color linoleum cut, 2007. 432 mm; 17 inches diameter (tondo), wide (full ?) margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 30/40 in pencil, lower margin.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
196
David c. driskell (1931 - 2020)
Chieftain’s Choice.
Color screenprint, 2011. 609x457 mm; 24x18 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 8/90 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by Raven Fine Art Editions, Easton, PA.
The same-titled 1966 painting is in the permanent collection of the Howard University Art Gallery, Howard University, Washington, DC.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
197
Wosene worke kosrof (1950 - )
Word Play XVIII.
Acrylic on cotton canvas, 2007. 1016x686 mm; 40x27 inches. Signed in acrylic, lower right recto. Signed, titled, and inscribed "40"x 27", Acrylic/Canvas" in ink, verso.
Born in the Arat Kilo district of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Wosene Worke Kosrof is a contemporary painter and sculptor who has an international reputation for his unique abstraction. Formally trained at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts, he completed a BFA with distinction in 1972. Then, as a Ford Foundation Talent Scholar, he was awarded an MFA in 1980 from Howard University in Washington, DC. Over the past four decades, Wosene (his professional name) has developed his use of the script forms – fiedel – of his native Amharic as a core element in his paintings and sculptures. His artwork today is in many institutional collections including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, the National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, the Newark Museum, the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Fowler Museum at UCLA.
Provenance: private collection, California.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
198
Bisa butler (1973 - )
Nandi and Natalie (Friends).
Quilted and appliquéd dyed cotton fabrics, 2007. 686x800 mm; 27x31½ inches. Initialed "BB" in thread, lower right.
This early work by Bisa Butler is the first quilt of this exciting contemporary fabric artist to come to auction.
Formally trained, Bisa Butler graduated Cum Laude from Howard University with a BFA degree. It was during her education at Howard that Butler was able to refine her natural talents under the tutelage of lecturers such as Lois Mailou Jones, Elizabeth Catlett, Jeff Donaldson and Ernie Barnes. Butler then went on to earn a Masters in Art from Montclair State University in 2005. Bisa Butler was a high school art teacher for 10 years in the Newark Public Schools and 3 years at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey. While in the process of obtaining her Masters degree Butler took a Fiber Arts class where she had an artistic epiphany and she finally realized how to express her art. “As a child, I was always watching my mother and grandmother sew, and they taught me. After that class, I made a portrait quilt for my grandmother on her deathbed, and I have been making art quilts ever since.”
Butler’s work is currently the focus of a solo exhibition Bisa Butler: Portraits at the Art Institute of Chicago, the second stop of a traveling exhibit which began at the Katonah Museum of Art. The Toledo Museum of Art is also currently exhibiting Butler’s work in a group show. Butler’s artwork has recently been acquired by many private and public collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Nelson-Adkins Museum, The Kemper Museum of Art, The Orlando Museum of Art, The Newark Museum, The Toledo Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New Jersey (2007).
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
199
Deana lawson (1979 - )
Coulson Family.
Archival inkjet print, 2008. 279x355 mm; 11x14 inches (sheet). Second edition (of 2). Signed and numbered 38/50 in ink, verso. Printed and published by Light Work, Syracuse, New York.
Born in 1979 in Rochester NY, photographer Deana Lawson blends controlled composition and intimacy to explore contemporary representations of blackness and collective memory. At first glance, her images appear straightforward but soon raise a series of complex questions and associations that challenge the viewer. Lawson received her BFA in photography from Pennsylvania State University in 2001, and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004. Recent solo exhibitions include Deana Lawson: Centropy, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland, 2020; Deana Lawson: Planes,The Underground Museum, 2018-19, and Forum 80: Deana Lawson, Carnegie Museum of Art, 2018. She has been awarded the Aaron Siskind Foundation, Individual Photographer's Fellowship grant, 2008–2009, the Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 2013, and the 2020 Hugo Boss Prize from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
200
Aaron fowler (1988 - )
Untitled (Storefront Landscape).
Oil on masonite panel, 2009. 406x610 mm; 16x24 inches. Signed and dated in in ink, upper right verso.
This painting displays the early interest of assemblage artist Aaron Fowler, best known for his large scale works that combine found objects, painting, and video, in urban environments. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Fowler now works in Harlem, New York City, Los Angeles, California, and St. Louis. Fowler received his BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2011, and MFA from Yale University in 2014. He had a solo exhibtion Aaron Fowler: Into Existence! at the Seattle Art Museum in 2019-20 and the Columbus College of Art and Design, and has exhibited at the New Museum, New York, the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He is a recipient of the Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize (2019), the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2015) and was an artist in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2014).
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection (2009).
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
201
Larry walker (1935 - )
Quote the Raven and Other Wall Spirits.
Mixed media and collage on heavy Arches paper, 2007-10. 571x762 mm; 22½x30 inches. Signed in acrylic, lower left.
Provenance: Mason Murer Fine Art, Atlanta, with the gallery label on the frame back; David Lusenhop, Cincinnati, OH; private collection, New York.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
202
Danny simmons (1954 - )
Miles to Go B4 I Sleep.
Oil and graphite on cotton canvas, 2012. 1524x1829 mm; 60x72 inches. Signed, titled and dated in red ink, upper left verso.
This vibrant canvas by Danny Simmons epitomizes his bold and expressive abstraction. Simmons has shown extensively in museum and gallery exhibitions over the past 20 years. His paintings are in the collections of the Anacostia Museum, Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC, the Hampton Museum, Hampton, VA and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. Simmons was the co-founder of the Def Poetry Jam performance series and the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.
Provenance: private collection.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
203
Sir frank bowling, obe ra (1934 - )
Ahaahead!
Color etching and aquatint, with monotype and extensive hand-coloring, 2013. 762x560 mm; 30x22 inches (sheet). Unique proof, aside from the edition of 30. Initialed and dated in pencil, lower right. Inscribed with printer's color notations in pencil, upper left. Published by Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ.
Ahaahead! was created to commemorate the Newark artist space Aljira's thirtieth anniversary.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
204
Julie mehretu (1970 - )
Untitled (Pulse).
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 2013. 558x647 mm; 22x25½ inches, full margins. Signed, dated and numbered 63/100 in pencil, lower margin. Published by Texte Zur Kunst, Berlin.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
205
Adam pendleton (1984 - )
Title TK.
Silkscreen with embossing on Somerset satin paper, 2010. 438x594 mm; 17¼x23½ inches. Signed, dated and numbered 91/100 in pencil, lower edge. Published by Artists Space, New York. From the Artists Space Annual Edition Portfolio 2010.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
206
Lynette yiadom-boakye (1977 -)
Siskin.
Hard ground etching on Somerset paper, 2012. 381x279 mm; 15x11 inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 15/25 in pencil, lower margin. Published by the Chisenhale Gallery, London.
Another impression of the print is in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
207
Beverly mciver (1962 - )
Pretty is…a Little Black Girl.
Color lithograph on Arches paper, 2002. 965x685 mm; 38x27 inches. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 14/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Segura Art Studios, Notre Dame Center for Arts & Culture, with the blind stamp lower right.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota.
Beverly McIver depicts herself here in blackface make-up, standing alone in an ambiguous setting, gazing pensively at the viewer. Dressed in a maid’s uniform (her mother was a domestic worker), she wears a clown’s wig and white gloves, cradling a pair of black-skinned dolls in her arm. Her shoes and socks are those of a child. On the wall behind her hangs a portrait of a grinning circus clown. The scene recounts a recurring dream from McIver’s childhood. She explained: “As a child, I had dreamed of becoming a clown to escape my black skin, poverty, and the housing project I once called home. In high school, she was a pre-professional clown and considered attending clown college. She says it was her "liberation.” For McIver, the self-portrait is a journey in self-revelation in which she confronts black stereotypes while seeking her own identity as a woman and an African American.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
208
Vanessa german (1976 - )
You Bring Out the Savage in Me #1.
Mixed media assemblage, 2013. Approximately 1321x711x508 mm; 52x28x20 inches.
Exhibited: Vanessa German: Citizen Artist, Concept Art Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, January 9 - February 8, 2014.
This incredible sculpture by Vanessa German was featured in her solo exhibition at Concept Art Gallery, her first with the Pittsburgh gallery. In the exhibition catalogue, the artist describes the multitude of media in this work as follows: "model ship, old keys, silk quilt, twine, wire, homewood beads, hope, the liberty of flight, the weightless bones of sorrow, the sensation of rising up, radio flyer toy car—made in china, and bird salt shaker."
Vanessa German is a visual and performance artist based in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Homewood. A self-described "citizen artist", German fully engages her community as a community organizer and advocate; she founded both Love Front Porch and the ARThouse, community arts initiatives for the children of Homewood. Her work is found in many museum collections including Everson Museum of Art, Figge Art Museum, Flint Institute of Arts, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, David C. Driskell Center, Snite Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College. German was the recipient of the 2015 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, the 2017 Jacob Lawrence Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2018 United States Artist Grant and most recently the 2018 Don Tyson Prize from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Provenance: private collection, Washington, DC (2014).
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
209
Nelson stevens (1938 - )
Spirit Sister.
Color screenprint, 2013. 457x457 mm; 18x18 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 36/75 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by Raven Fine Print Editions, Easton, PA.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
210
Carrie mae weems (1953 - )
When and Where I Enter—Mussolini’s Rome.
Digital C-print, 2006. 762x609 mm; 30x24 inches (sheet). Signed, dated and numbered 6/30 in pencil, verso. Published by BAM, New York, part of the BAM Photo Portfolio IV, 2001-2009. From the artist's Roaming series.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
211
Latoya ruby frazier (1982- )
Holding flag laying at the edge of Pier 54 and the Hudson River.
U.V. digital print on denim, 2014. 427x630 mm; 16 ⅝x24 ⅝ inches. With a certificate of authenticity, signed, titled, dated and numbered 20/25 in ink. Printed and published in 2016 by Carré d’Art, Nimes, France.
This print was published in conjunction with LaToya Ruby Frazier’s solo museum exhibition at Carré d’Art, Nimes, France, her first at a French institution.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
212
Carrie mae weems (1953 - )
Untitled (Listening Devices).
Photo-etching on Chine collé, 2014. 1030x1080 mm; 51½x42½ inches (sheet). Signed, dated and numbered 19/30 in pencil, verso. Printed and published by Segura Arts Studio, Notre Dame Center for Arts & Culture.
Another impression of this print is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Estimate
$12,000 – $18,000
213
Carrie mae weems (1953 - )
All the Boys.
Offset lithograph on Somerset paper, 2017. 700x962 mm; 27½x37⅞ inches. Signed, dated and numbered 13/30 in pencil, verso. Printed by Derriere L’Etoile Studios, Long Island City, New York. Published by Segura Arts Studio, Notre Dame Center for Arts & Culture, with the blind stamp lower right.
Other impressions of this print are in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC and the Snite Museum of Art, the University of Notre Dame.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
214
Steve a. prince (1968 - )
Rosa Sparks.
Linoleum cut on thick wove paper, 2017. 1008x1320 mm; 39 ⅜x52⅜ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 12/40 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Segura Art Studios, Notre Dame Center for Arts & Culture, with the blind stamp lower right.
Steve A. Prince's drawings and prints are composed of gestural and emotive Black figures, layered in a subjective narrative with a spiritual core at the essence of each artwork. Prince is a mixed media artist, master printmaker, lecturer, educator, and art evangelist. A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, he currently works and resides in Williamsburg, Virginia. Prince received his BFA from Xavier University of Louisiana and his MFA in Printmaking and Sculpture from Michigan State University.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
215
Dindga mccannon (1947 - )
Mary Lou Williams, Jazz Pianist.
Mixed media quilt assemblage, with machine embroidery, collage and appliqué, 2017. Approximately 1117x787 mm; 44x31 inches. Signed "dindga", titled and dated in stitched red thread, verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New York.
Estimate
$40,000 – $60,000
216
David antonio cruz (1974 - )
Whenitallreturns.
Oil on wood panel, 2016. 203x203 mm; 8x8 inches. Signed, dated and inscribed "We are going to wait for the rain to wash it away", "Sheldon II" and "oil and enamel on wood, 8x8 inches" in ink on the verso.
The small but stunning portrait by David Antonio Cruz is an excellent example of the painting of this multidisciplinary artist and Professor of the Practice in Painting and Drawing at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Cruz fuses painting and performance to explore the visibility and intersectionality of brown, black, and queer bodies. Cruz received a BFA in painting from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Yale University. He attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and completed the AIM Program at the Bronx Museum. Recent residencies include the LMCC Workspace Residency, Project For Empty Space’s Social Impact Residency, and BRICworkspace. Cruz’s work has been included in notable group exhibitions at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, El Museo del Barrio, BRIC, Performa 13, and the Bronx Museum of Art. His fellowships and awards include the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, the Franklin Furnace Fund Award, the Urban Artist Initiative Award, the Queer Mentorship Fellowship, and the Neubauer Faculty Fellowship at Tufts University. Bio courtesy of the artist's website.
Provenance: donated by the artist and acquired from the 2016 Exhibition and Art Auction Gala, Washington Project for the Arts; private collection, Washington DC (2016).
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
217
Willie cole (1955 - )
Steamed Man.
Lithograph on Rives BFK paper, 2018. 486x673 mm; 19⅛x26½ inches, full margins. Edition of 40. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Segura Art Studios, Notre Dame Center for Arts & Culture, with the blind stamp lower right.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
218
Willie cole (1955 - )
Scorch Nation Spirit.
Etching and aquatint on Arches paper, 2018. 610x457 mm; 24x18 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 26/40 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Segura Art Studios, Notre Dame Center for Arts & Culture, with the blind stamp lower right.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
219
Rashid johnson (1977 - )
Untitled.
Enamel screenprint resist, with hand application of pigment, on cream wove paper, 2019. 647x495 mm; 25½x19½ inches. Artist’s proof, aside from the edition of 40. Signed in pencil, lower right, and inscribed “AP” and numbered 7/12 in pencil, lower left.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
220
Tyrone geter (1945 - )
Where Are All the Girls?
Charcoal and graphite on wove paper, with torn paper collage, 2019. 1016x1524 mm; 40x60 inches. Signed and dated in graphite, lower left.
This dramatic drawing not only exemplifies the exceptional draftsmanship of Tyrone Geter, but his experimentation with torn paper surfaces and collage. It is only the second artwork of this figurative painter, sculptor, illustrator and educator to come to auction.
Geter recently retired as Associate Professor of Art at Benedict College in Columbia, SC. Born in Anniston, Alabama, Geter received his MFA from Ohio University in 1978 with an emphasis on painting and drawing. In 1979, Tyrone Geter moved to Zaria, Nigeria, where for seven years he lived, drew and painted among the Fulani and local peoples of Northern Nigeria. He returned to the United States in 1987 and a teaching position at the University of Akron where he transformed his experience in Nigeria into some of the most powerful work of his career. His work has been exhibited in numerous museums including the Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC, the Florence Museum of Art, Florence, SC, the Center for Afro-American Artists, Boston, MA, the Butler Institute for American Art, Youngstown, OH, the Hampton Institute College Museum, Hampton, VA and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston. Geter has had solo exhibitions at Northeastern Univiersity, Boston, MA and the Taft Museum of Art, Cincinatti, OH, and was the subject of a 2014 retrospective at the North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC. Biography courtesy of Neema Fine Art Gallery, Chareston, SC.
Provenance: private collection, South Carolina.