African American Art
Officers
Nigel Freeman
Vice President & Director, African American Art
nfreeman@swanngalleries.com
212 254 4710 ext. 33
Corey Serrant
Cataloguer
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(212) 254-4710 ext. 29
Shanell Kitt
Administrator
skitt@swanngalleries.com
(212) 254-4710 ext. 56
George S. Lowry
Chairman
Nicholas D. Lowry
President, Principal Auctioneer
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Andrew M. Ansorge
Vice President & Controller
Alexandra Mann-Nelson
Chief Marketing Officer
2030704
Todd Weyman
Vice President & Director, Prints & Drawings
1214107
Nigel Freeman
Vice President & Director, African American Art
Rick Stattler
Vice President & Director, Books & Manuscripts
Administration
Andrew M. Ansorge
Vice President & Controller
aansorge@swanngalleries.com
Ariel Kim
Client Accounting
akim@swanngalleries.com
Diana Gibaldi
Operations Manager
diana@swanngalleries.com
Kelsie Jankowski
Communications Manager
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Shannon Licitra
Shipping Manager
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Modern
MAY HOWARD JACKSON (1877 - 1931) (after)
Slave Boy .
Bronze with a dark brown patina, mounted on a wooden base, 1899. 406x330x203 mm; 16x13x8 inches, not including the base. Cast in the 1980s. Incised with the maker's cypher, "5" and "©" at the rear lower edge.
Illustrated: The Catalogue of the Barnett-Aden Collection , the Museum of African American Art, Tampa, FL and the Florida Education Fund, another cast, p. 26.
This handsome bust is a posthumous work made when director Adolphus Ealey had bronze casts fabricated after works in the Barnett Aden collection - it was not cast from an original mold. Other similar casts of Slave Boy are in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Kinsey African American Art Collection and the William C. Robinson Family Collection.
May Howard Jackson is one of the earliest African American female artists, alongside Edmonia Lewis (c. 1843 - 1912) and Meta Warrick Vaux Fuller (1877 - 1968). Born in the same year, Jackson and Fuller both came from privileged families that embraced fine art and studied at the Pennsylvania Museum School as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Jackson won a scholarship to attend in 1895, the year before Fuller - becoming the first African American woman to attend. She married in 1902, and moved to Washington, DC, establishing a studio there and exhibiting at the Corcoran Gallery. In 1912, she exhibited busts of F. J. Reverend Grimke and W. E. B. Du Bois at the Verhoof Galleries in Washington, DC, which received critical acclaim. Nevertheless, she was rejected by the Washington Society of Fine Arts and the National Academy of Design. She later joined the faculty at Howard University, where she taught with James A. Porter, and continued to exhibit her artwork at the Harmon Foundation and the Barnett-Aden Gallery. Farrington pp. 72-74; St. James p. 266.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
Henry ossawa tanner (1859 - 1937)
The Disciples See Christ Walking on the Water .
Etching on cream wove paper, circa 1905-15. 184x244 mm; 7¼x9⅝ inches, full margins. Signed by the artist’s son, Jesse O. Tanner, and numbered 61/120 in ink, verso. With the artist’s estate ink stamp, verso.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
William a. harper (1873 - 1910)
Untitled (Farm House) .
Oil on thin wood panel, circa 1903-05. 117x193 mm; 4⅝x7⅝ inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: estate of the artist; private collection, Decatur, IL (circa 1922), thence by descent, private collection, Virginia. The owner’s great grandmother acquired this painting from the Harper family in Decatur. A number of oil paintings by William A. Harper were exhibited at the Decatur Art Institute in January of 1922. The painting is numbered 19 in pencil on the verso and has a number 19 label on the frame back.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
William a. harper (1873 - 1910)
Untitled (Landscape with House on Horizon) .
Oil on canvas mounted on thick cardstock, circa 1907. 320x396 mm; 12⅞x15⅝ inches. Signed in oil, lower left.
Provenance: estate of the artist; private collection, Decatur, IL (circa 1922), thence by descent, private collection, Virginia. The owner's great grandmother acquired this painting from the Harper family in Decatur. A number of oil paintings by William A. Harper were exhibited at the Decatur Art Institute in January of 1922.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
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.
Provenance: the artist; Dorothy Porter Walker; Constance Porter Uzelac; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection.
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.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
James lesesne wells (1902 - 1993)
Builders .
Linoleum cut on cream Japan paper, 1929. 368x273 mm; 14x10¾ inches, wide margins. Artist's proof, from a later printing of an unknown edition size. Signed, dated and inscribed "AP" in pencil, lower margin. Another impression dated 1929 is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Exhibited: James Lesesne Wells: Sixty Years of Art , curated and organized by Richard Powell and Jock Reynolds, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC, December 4, 1986 - January 24, 1987, then traveled to The Studio Museum in Harlem, spring and summer 1988 (another impression).
Illustrated: Richard Powell and Jock Reynolds, James Lesesne Wells: Sixty Years of Art . p. iii (another impression).
Builders was created by Wells the year he began teaching printmaking at Howard University in Washington, DC. In Builders, Wells portrays the everyday experience of African Americans at labor in this bold, graphic composition.
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
Richmond barthé (1901 - 1989)
Boy with a Broom .
Painted plaster, 1929. Approximately 533x330x280 mm; 21x13x11 inches. Incised signature and date on the base.
Provenance: acquired at the Southside Community Art Center, Chicago (1940); private collection, Atlanta; thence by descent to the current owner, Georgia.
The owner's mother was gifted this work by Peter Pollack, the director of the Southside Community Art Center in 1940. While cleaning out their building's basement, she found this sculpture abandoned at 3831 S Michigan Avenue. Previously, the home was built in 1892 for George A. Seaverns, Jr. and his family. In the early 20th century, as wealthy white families moved away, the grand house was eventually converted into apartments in the now African American neighborhood.
Illustrated: Samella Lewis, Barthé: His Life in Art p. 37, reproduction of a photograph in the artist's archives; Margaret Vendryes, Barthé: A Life in Sculpture , fig. 2.22, p. 46, reproduction of a photograph in the magazine Mission Fields at Home , September 1931.
Exhibited: An Exhibition of Portraits and Sculpture by Richmond Barthé , The Woman’s City Club, Chicago, June 7 - 21, 1930. This exhibition of 38 works, included the sculptures Jubilee Singer, Deviled Crab Man, Blackberry Woman, Black Narcissus, West Indian Venus and Breakaway . Exhibition of the Work of Negro Artists, the Harmon Foundation, New York, February 16 - 28, 1931. Boy with a Broom was one of five artworks by Barthé in his second showing at the Harmon Foundation; The Wisconsin Union, University of Wisconsin, April 7 - May 1, 1931. It included 17 artworks; one sold for $50; Women’s City Club, 22 Park Ave, New York, June 7 - 21, 1931. It included Boy With a Broom along with several others from the earlier Harmon Foundation exhibition.
Boy with a Broom is an exciting discovery - an extremely scarce example of a large plaster sculpture surviving from Richmond Barthé's early career. Most of the early plaster works from Barthé's first two Harmon Foundation exhibitions, like West Indian Girl , 1929 are only known today from reproductions. In 1928, Barthé also made a series of historical African American figures in busts including Henry Ossawa Tanner and Touissant L'Ouverture; from this series, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Booker T. Washington are now in the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. This charming, life-size portrait was likely made in New York as Barthé arrived in Harlem in February of 1929 and did not return to Chicago until the summer of 1930. While Barthé was the toast of the town in Harlem, he was also preparing for his first solo exhibition sponsored by the Woman's City Club of Chicago planned for June of 1930. He brought back to Chicago 24 sculptures, six oil paintings and eight drawings, including Boy with a Broom . It was such a success that soon after Barthé successfully applied for a Rosenwald Foundation scholarship to return to New York.
We would like to thank art historian and Barthé expert Margaret Rose Vendryes for sharing her notes detailing the sculpture's exhibition history. Vendryes pp 39-46; Schulman p. 84.
Estimate
$25,000 – $35,000
Sargent johnson (1888 - 1967)
Divine Love .
Etching on cream wove paper, circa 1930. 152x114 mm; 6x4½ inches, wide margins. Signed, titled and dated "33" in pencil, lower margin.
Another impression dated 1930 is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Illustrated: Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins, San Francisco Museum of Art, Sargent Johnson: African American Modernist, plate 7, p. 48 (another impression printed in brown from a 1935 printing).
This scarce print is a beautiful example of Sargent Johnson’s interest in both Modernism and African sculpture. While working on a small scale, Johnson’s imagery elevated the depiction of African American women in fine art to a new level in the 1930s.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
William edouard scott (1884 - 1964)
Untitled (Man with Child Holding Basket) .
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1931. 768x508 mm; 30¼x20 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
Provenance: the estate of Claude A. Barnett and Etta Moten Barnett, Chicago. Etta Moten Barnett (1901 – 2004) was a popular African American actress and vocalist, who was best known for her signature role of Bess in Porgy and Bess. She married Claude Albert Barnett (1889 – 1967) in 1934. Barnett was an influential and trailblazing national figure - an important media entrepreneur, journalist and one of the principal organizers of the Chicago Negro Exposition in 1940. Barnett is also known as the founder of the Associated Negro Press in 1919, the first Black news service in the country, connecting Black newspapers across the country.
This depiction of a Haitian man and a boy crossing a street is a beautiful and scarce example from William Edouard Scott's early Haitian period. Scott, born in Indianapolis, trained at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1904-09. After winning several painting scholarships and awards at the Institute, he travelled to Paris, where he studied with Henry Ossawa Tanner and enrolled at the Académie Julian. When he returned in 1912, he received many mural commissions, including for the Chicago World's Fair of 1933 and for the Federal Art Project of the WPA in Chicago. While Scott's time in Paris had a profound effect on his early work, the year Scott spent in Haiti shaped the rest of his career.
Scott was awarded a Julius Rosenwald Foundation scholarship in 1931 to study and paint the African beliefs and customs that had survived in the culture of this independent island nation. Scott left for Haiti that year, and did many plein air sketches around the docks and streets of the capitol city Port-au-Prince. These studies were later translated into larger canvases in the artist's rooftop studio of the Excelsior Hotel in Port-au-Prince. With his extensive experience painting murals, Scott specialized in large multi-figure scenes, but painted moving portraits as well. Others include Blind Sister Mary and Kenskoff, Haiti, both circa 1931, collection of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the New York Public Library. Schulman p. 86; Taylor/Warkel figs. 17-18, p. 35.
Estimate
$25,000 – $35,000
Hale woodruff (1900 - 1980)
Head of Old Woman.
Linoleum cut on cream wove paper, circa 1930s. 101x154 mm; 4x6 inches, full margins. Signed and titled in pencil, lower margin. A good, early impression of this scarce print.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Hale woodruff (1900 - 1980)
Sunday Promenade .
Linoleum cut on imitation Japan paper, circa 1935. 240x200 mm; 9¾x7¾ inches, wide margins. Artist proof. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Artist's Proof" in pencil, lower margin. A later impression, printed circa 1975.
Additional impressions are in the collections of the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the High Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art.
Sunday Promenade portrays the everyday experiences of African Americans in Atlanta, Georgia during the Great Depression. Woodruff explored the pervasive violence of lynching and the mundane suffering of poverty through his works in this series. Here, he conveys liveliness and beauty in a procession of women dressed in their Sunday's best. This linoleum cut is part of a group made over a fifteen year period while Woodruff was teaching at Spelman College from 1931-46.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Hale woodruff (1900 - 1980)
Returning Home .
Linoleum cut on imitation Japan paper, 1935. 240x200 mm; 9¾x7¾ inches, wide margins. Artist's proof. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Artist's Proof" in pencil, lower margin. A later impression, printed circa 1975.
This linoleum cut is part of a group made over a fifteen year period while Woodruff was teaching at Spelman College from 1931-46. There are additional impressions in the permanent collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Joseph delaney (1904-1991)
Pair of Drawings.
Both brush and ink on cream wove paper, circa 1930s. Both 266x190 mm; 10½x7½ inches. Both signed in ink, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, New Orleans.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Untitled (Sketch of a Boy) .
Charcoal on thin buff wove paper, 1937. 281x228 mm; 11⅝x9 inches. Signed and dated "Nov. '37" in charcoal, lower right. With numerous artist's notations in pencil at the sheet edges.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection.
This intimate drawing of a seated boy appears to be a preliminary study for Hughie Lee-Smith's 1938 oil painting Portrait of a Boy . It is a scarce example of a drawing from his Cleveland period of the late 1930s when Lee-Smith was studying at the Cleveland School of Art and developing an interest in social realism.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Richmond barthé (1901 - 1989)
Head of a Dancer (Harald Kreutzberg) .
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.
Provenance: private collection, Washington, DC.; the estate of Allan O. Hunter, Jr., acquired at Swann Galleries, October 4, 2018.
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 studied Martha Graham's dance techniques in an effort to 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.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
Portrait of Two Brothers and Their Sister .
Silver print, 1931. 191x241 mm; 7½x9½ inches. Signed and numbered XV 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
James vanderzee (1886 - 1983)
The Heiress, Harlem .
Silver print, 1938. 191x241 mm; 7½x9½ inches. Signed and numbered XVII 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
James vanderzee (1886 -1983)
GGG Photo Studio .
Silver print, circa early 1940s. 219x140 mm; 8½x5½ inches. Printed in the 1940s, with the artist’s GGG Photo Studio ink stamp, verso.
This scarce photograph shows the artist’s studio on the ground and first floors at 272 Lenox Avenue in Harlem.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Wilmer jennings (1910 - 1990)
Shack .
Wood engraving on cream wove paper, circa 1938. 127x101 mm; 203x139 mm; 8x5½ inches, wide margins. Signed, titled and numbered 7/25 in pencil, lower margin.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, printmaker and designer Wilmer Jennings attended Morehouse College and studied under Hale Woodruff, who introduced him to the principles of modernism. Under the Graphic Arts Division of the WPA in 1934, they worked together on two notable murals that represented the African American experience: The Negro in Modern American Life: Agriculture and Rural Life, Literature, Music, and Art and The Dream. Unfortunately, both murals were destroyed.
After graduating from Morehouse College, Jennings moved to New England to attend the Rhode Island School of Design (1933). Hired by the Rhode Island WPA in 1935, he created works that portrayed the economic hardships of African Americans during the Depression. The subjects of his later work included landscape and social realist scenes of his community. After injuring his right hand in 1957, Jennings began to train himself to draw and paint left-handed, which he continued to do up until the time of his death. Wilmer Jennings's artwork is in the permanent collections of the Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Wilmer jennings (1910 - 1990)
Iris .
Wood engraving on cream wove paper, circa 1938. 127x101 mm; 5x4 inches, wide margins. Signed, titled and numbered 6/25 in pencil, lower margin.
A similar wood engraving by Wilmer Jennings, Growing Corn, 1938 is in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Allan rohan crite (1910 - 2007)
Steal Away Home, I Ain’t Got Long to Stay Here .
Pen, brush and ink on cream illustration board, 1937. 432x305 mm; 17x12 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, New Jersey.
This large and beautiful ink drawing by Allan Rohan Crite impressively illustrates the chorus from the spiritual Steal Away (Steal Away to Jesus), one of the many spiritual songs popularized by Fisk University Jubilee Singers.
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
Allan rohan crite (1910 - 2007)
Alone in the Big, Wide World (Boy, Girl, Bicycle)
Watercolor, pen and ink on cream wove paper, circa 1939. 381x279 mm; 15x11 inches. Signed in pencil, lower right recto. Signed and inscribed with the artist’s Boston address in pen and ink, lower right verso. Titled in pencil, lower right verso.
Provenance: acquired from Anderson Fine Arts, Jersey City, NJ; private collection (1988).
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
Allan rohan crite (1910 - 2007)
The Annunciation .
Brass plaque, with plaster and bronze backing, 1940. 178x140 mm; 7x5½ inches. Inscribed signature and date, lower right recto. With the artist’s typed label on the frame back, signed and numbered (3) in ink.
Provenance: collection of the artist, Boston; 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
$5,000 – $7,000
Richmond barthé (1909 - 1989)
Untitled (Etta Moten Barnett) .
Pastel on cream wove paper, circa 1940. 685x558 mm; 27x22 inches. Signed in pastel, lower right.
Provenance: the estate of Claude A. Barnett and Etta Moten Barnett, Chicago.
Illustrated: Langston Hughes. The Negro Speaks of Rivers. As Sung by Etta Moten. Music by Margaret Bonds, Words by Langston Hughes. New York: Handy Brothers Music, 1942, cover illustration. This drawing is reproduced on the cover of this printed sheet music. A photograph of this drawing is also located in Photographs of Prominent African Americans, James Weldon Johnson Collection in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Etta Moten Barnett (1901 - 2004) was a popular African American actress and vocalist, who was best known for her signature role of Bess in Porgy and Bess . She married Claude Albert Barnett (1889 - 1967) in 1934. Barnett was an influential and trailblazing national figure - an important media entrepreneur, journalist and one of the principal organizers of the Chicago Negro Exposition in 1940. Barnett is also known as the founder of the Associated Negro Press in 1919, the first Black news service in the country, connecting Black newspapers across the country. By 1950 Barnett's news organization had became an influential international news source. The Barnetts travelled the world together - he frequently to report on African events for the ANP. In March 1957, Moten Barnett interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Accra, Ghana, when the Barnetts, along with Vice President Richard Nixon, attended the celebration of Ghana's independence from Great Britain.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Richmond barthé (1909 - 1989)
Untitled (Etta Vee Barnett) .
Pastel on cream wove paper, circa 1940. 685x558 mm; 27x22 inches. Signed in pastel, lower right.
Provenance: the estate of Claude A. Barnett and Etta Moten Barnett, Chicago.
Etta Vee Barnett is the youngest daughter of Etta Moten Barnett and her first husband Curtis Brooks. Richmond Barthé was a friend and regular visitor at the Barnett household.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Margaret burroughs (1917 - 2010)
Day Coach .
Lithograph on cream wove paper, circa 1940. 241x342 mm; 9½x13½ inches, full margins. Edition of 10. Signed “Margaret Taylor Goss”, titled and inscribed “10 prints” in pencil, lower margin.
This is the first impression of this scarce print to come to auction.
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
Henry bozeman jones (1889 - 1973)
Portrait of a Young Boy .
Oil on masonite board, circa 1945. 609x508 mm; 24x20 inches. Signed in oil, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, Philadelphia. Presentation plaque on the front of the frame engraved, "Presented by Susan Parrish Wharton Settlement 1945."
Portrait of a Young Boy is a seated portrait of a young boy posed to the right of a sculpture of the same sitter. The painting's plaque shows that it was a gift presented to Susan Parrish Wharton from the Susan Parrish Wharton Settlement in 1945. Susan Wharton Parrish was an advocate of the Settlement movement and early supporter of African American rights. She opened the Whittier Centre for Blacks in North Philadelphia, later renamed the Susan Parrish Wharton Settlement after her death in 1928. The Settlement continued in the twenty-first century as the Wharton Centre.
Henry Bozeman Jones studied at the School of Pedagogy and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1908 - 1910. While earning a living as a children's book illustrator, Jones was a painter, printmaker and a contemporary of Allan Freelon. He exhibited his work in the Harmon Foundation exhibitions of 1929, 1930, 1931 and 1933. According to Against the Odds: African-American Artists and the Harmon Foundation, his work changed from an academic style to a more colorful, modern aesthetic in 1937 after a sketching trip to North Carolina and the Bahamas. Reynolds/Wright/Driskell p. 223.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Vera jackson (1911 - 1999)
Dorothy Dandridge .
Silver print, 1945. 352x279 mm; 13⅞x11 inches. Signed, titled "D. Dandridge", dated "1945", numbered #7/28 in pencil on the over mat. Printed in 1985 with the artist's "Historical Enterprises Vera Jackson" ink stamp on the verso and on the mount back.
Provenance: collection of the artist; private collection, Virginia (1988), acquired from the Museum of African American Art, Los Angeles, California.
Vera Ruth (Jackson) was born in 1911 in Wichita, Kansas. After the death of her mother at age 5, Vera and her father relocated to a farm in Corona, California. In 1936, she began taking WPA sponsored photography classes taught by George Manuel. Her first photo job was as an assistant to photographer Maceo Sheffield. She was hired as a staff photographer for the California Eagle in 1945, where she was a pioneer among both female and African American photographers, capturing both the glamour of Black celebrities and the stirrings of the civil rights movement after World War II. She later worked with publisher Charlotta Bass, a leader in the Los Angeles civil rights movement, photographing protests at City Hall. Jackson became a frequent contributor to the letter section of the Los Angeles Times, expressing her view on civil rights.
The artist is best known for her photographs of prominent African Americans of her day, capturing such figures as Billie Holiday, Ralph Bunche, Jackie Robinson, and Dorothy Dandridge in her lens. Between the 1940s and 1950s, Jackson produced a large body of photographic work, and she left the newspaper to pursue higher education. Jackson received her BA in education in 1952 at the University of California at Los Angeles and her MA in 1954 from the University of Southern California. For more than twenty years, she was an educator with the Los Angeles School District. After shifting from full-time photojournalism, Jackson continued to contribute photographs to various magazines, including Black Angelenos, Travel and Art, and Design.
In 1997, Jackson was featured in A History of Women Photographers, a major exhibition that traveled to the New York Public Library and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Her works have also been exhibited at the Cinque Gallery, New York, CAAM, the UCLA Gallery, the Riverside Art Museum, the New York Public Library, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, the Akron Art Museum and SF MoMA. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Akron Art Museum.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Postwar
Hayward oubre (1916 - 2006)
Entanglement .
Etching and aquatint on cream wove paper, 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.
Hayward 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
Claude clark (1915 - 2001)
Ritual Dance .
Oil on masonite board, 1946. 430x330 mm; 17x13 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: estate of the artist, Oakland, CA; private collection, New York, acquired at Swann Galleries, February 23, 2010.
Claude Clark was an innovative painter and printmaker whose family moved from Alabama to Philadelphia in 1923. After winning a four-year scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, he was supported by Dr. Albert C. Barnes, and in 1944, his painting Cutting Pattern was the second work by an African American artist accepted into the Barnes Foundation, after a painting by Horace Pippin. Clark was a colleague of Dox Thrash and Raymond Steth in the Philadelphia Fine Print Workshop of the WPA from 1939 - 1942, where he helped develop carborundum etching. He returned to his native Alabama to give an art workshop at Talladega College, AL in 1949. He stayed and eventually created the art department at the school, where he taught until 1955. His paintings and prints are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and the de Young Museum, San Francisco. Messenger, p. 48.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
In Other Folks’ Homes .
Linoleum cut on cream wove paper, 1946. 160x55 mm; 6⅜×2⅛ inches, full margins. Artist's proof, aside from the edition of 20. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "AP I" in pencil, lower margin. Printed by the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, New York, in 1989. From I am the Black Woman series.
Additional impressions are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
I have special reservations… .
Linoleum cut on wove paper, 1947. 162x159 mm; 6⅜x6¼> inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 6/20 in pencil, lower margin. Printed at Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop, New York, in 1989. From the I am the Black Woman series.
Additional impressions are in the permanent collections of Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
James lesesne wells (1902 - 1993)
Interlude .
Oil on linen canvas, 1949. 1016x762 mm; 40x30 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Washington, DC.
Illustrated: Cedric Dover, American Negro Art , plate 64, p. 140.
Interlude is a significant oil painting of James Lesesne Wells - a scarce, large example of his 1940s modernist painting. While known primarily as a printmaker, Wells established himself as a talented modernist painter early in his career. Wells first gained national recognition with the Harmon Foundation award for his 1931 oil painting Journey to Egypt . This painting and Wells’s Journey into the Holy Land were acquired in 1931 and 1935 by the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC - the first African American artist acquired by the collection. Interlude is illustrated in Cedric Dover important 1950 survey American Negro Art and is listed in Cederholm’s Afro-American Artists: Bio-bibliographical Directory . Other oil paintings from 1949 include his Still Life which was once in the Evan-Tibbs Collection, Washington, DC.
In 1949, Wells was in the center of the growing visual artist community in Washington, DC and rose to the position of associate professor at Howard University. He’d taken a sabattical the previous year to study intaglio printmaking with Stanley William Hayter at his Atelier 17 in New York, and began making wood engravings. In 1950, Wells had a solo exhibition, “Paintings and Prints by James Lesesne Wells” at the Barnett-Aden Gallery in Washington, DC from April 1 - May 31.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
James lesesne wells (1902 - 1992)
Bronze C Street Diana .
Woodcut on imitation Japan paper, circa 1940s. 304x457 mm; 12x18 inches, wide margins. Signed, titled, dated "72" and inscribed "4th imp." in pencil, lower margin. A later impression printed in 1972 of this scarce print.
Inspired by the environs of Washington, DC in the 1940s, Wells made woodcut landscapes of various locales, including River Boat C. & O. Canal, DC and Flower Vendor. Bronze C Street Diana is a view of the fountain honoring the early twentieth-century lawyer, Joseph J. Darlington. The monument, a sculpture of Diana the Huntress, is atop a plinth at Fifth Street and Indiana Avenue in Judiciary Square.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
James lesesne wells (1902 - 1992)
The Awakening .
Woodcut on imitation Japan paper, circa late 1940s. 254x355 mm; 10x14 inches, wide margins. Signed, titled, dated “55” and numbered 7/35 in pencil, lower margin. A later impression printed in 1955 of this scarce woodcut.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Paul f. keene, jr. (1920 - 2009)
Untitled .
Oil on linen canvas, 1949. 609x508 mm; 24x20 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, Delaware; private collection, PA.
This early oil on canvas by Paul Keene was executed during a formative period of his career spent in Paris between 1949 and 1951. Keene absorbed the lessons of European modernism and enrolled at the Académie Julian. While in Paris, he founded the cooperative Galerie Huit with Raymond Hendler, shared an apartment with Sanford Greenberg, and studied with French modernist painter Fernand Léger. Keene exhibited with Picasso and Léger at the Salon de Mai and through Whitney Fellowships directed courses at the Centre D'Art, Port-au-Prince, Haiti between 1952 and 1954.
Keene went on to teach painting and drawing at Bucks County Community College from 1968 to 1985, serving as the art department chairperson for three years. He has exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the James A. Michener Art Museum, the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, all in PA.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
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
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Untitled (Rhododendrons) .
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1948. 1117x1372 mm; 42x54 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; Margradel and Leonard Hicks, New York (1960s); thence by descent, private collection, Vermont.
This beautiful, modernist composition is an important early abstraction by Norman Lewis. This large canvas displays the artist's deep investigation of the dark tonalities and form found in the curled leaves of rhododendrons. The painting represents a significant moment, the confluence of Lewis's interest in modernism, black paint and natural forms that characterize his earliest abstract period and on a grand scale.
Reflecting his great love of plants, of which he kept many in his studio, Lewis drew and painted several images of the leaves of rhododendron plants hanging down in the cold of winter. In 1948, Lewis painted the vertical and tonal composition Rhododendrons in Winter, in the Mott/Warsh Collection, which he later included in his first solo exhibition at the Willard Gallery in 1949. Another almost identical but smaller (18x24 inches) painting Three in Spades, 1948, is recorded with a photograph in the estate of the artist. Illustrated in the catalogue Norman Lewis: Black Paintings, 1946-1977, Ann Gibson used this image in her essay Black is a Color: Norman Lewis and Modernism in New York to illustrate how Lewis's interest in the color black began. It goes back to his painting of rhododendrons; according to Lewis, it "started with some rhododendrons...which I painted. I used just black - to convey the form - and I liked that and I went on to try to do other things". Lewis continued to use black and a dark palette through the 1940s to define his abstract forms. In Untitled and City Night, two 1949 paintings in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Lewis creates a similar dark silhouette around the central image; Untitled shares this earthy palette of greens and greys.
Estimate
$350,000 – $500,000
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Jazz Quartet .
Oil and ink on cream wove paper, 1952. 483x610 mm; 19x24 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: acquired from Kenkeleba Gallery, NY, private collection, NY.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
William sylvester carter (1909 - 1986)
Untitled (Harlequin Figure) .
Tempera on wove paper, circa 1950. 508x381 mm; 20x15 inches. Signed in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Chicago.
A landscape and figure painter, William S. Carter was born in St. Louis in 1909. He moved to Chicago in 1930 and studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at the University of Illinois. In cooperation with the Harmon Foundation, in the summer of 1940, Carter was included in a group of young WPA-era artists in the important Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro at the Tanner Galleries, assembled by Alonzo Aden for the American Negro Exposition in Chicago. In 1943, he joined the Illinois Art Project of the Works Progress Administration and worked with artists such as Charles White, Eldzier Cortor, Earl Walker and Charles Davis.
Carter's works are found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the DuSable Museum of African American History and the South Side Community Art Center, all in Chicago, and the Clark-Atlanta University Art Galleries.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Eldzier cortor (1916 - 2015)
Composition .
Watercolor on wove paper, circa 1949-51. 578x394 mm; 22⅝x15½ inches. Signed in watercolor, lower right. Signed, titled and inscribed "watercolor" and "Haiti" in ink on the cardboard back board.
Provenance: private collection, New York; private collection, Ohio.
This attractive watercolor is a scarce example of Eldzier Cortor's painting from his Haitian period. Cortor traveled there first in 1949 on a Guggenheim Fellowship. Then from 1949-51, Cortor was a teacher at Le Centre d'Art, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, an art center, school and gallery founded in 1944 which became the center of what became known as the Haitian Art Movement.
Cortor is best known for his elegant draughtsmanship and depiction of the beauty of Black women. Born in Richmond, Virginia in 1916, his family moved to Chicago where he attended Englewood High School with future artists Charles White and Charles Sebree. He studied drawing at the Art Institute of Chicago, and was a founding member of the Southside Community Art Center where he taught drawing and worked on murals during the Works Progress Administration. A Rosenwald Fellowship in 1944-45 at Sea Islands, Georgia, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1949 in Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti, and teaching at the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from 1949-51 all increased his awareness of both nature and the African diaspora, which he incorporated in the naturalism of his painting.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
Hartwell yeargans (1915 - 2005)
Untitled (Two Women) .
Oil on linen canvas, 1953. 864x610 mm; 34x24 inches. Signed and dated “53” in oil, lower right.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; private collection, New York.
An early, modern painting by Hartwell Yeargans who studied painting and drawing at the New York City’s Art League under Morris Kantor from 1948 to 1951.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Untitled (Young Woman Looking Up) .
Tempera on cream wove paper, mounted to board, 1954. 724x559 mm; 28½x22 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; George W. Crockett, Jr. and Ethelene J. Crockett, MD (1954), Detroit, Michigan; thence by descent, private collection, Virginia. The Crocketts were close friends of Elizabeth Catlett and Francisco Mora, and acquired this portrait during a visit to Mexico City. Catlett also drew a large portrait of Ethelene Crockett in pencil in 1958.
George William Crockett, Jr. (1909 - 1997) was an African American attorney, jurist, and congressman from Michigan. He also served as a national vice-president of the National Lawyers Guild and co-founded what is believed to be the first racially integrated law firm in the United States.
Dr. Ethelene Jones Crockett (1914 - 1978) was a physician and community activist. She was Michigan's first African American female board certified OB/GYN, the first woman to be president of the American Lung Association, and inducted posthumously into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
This significant, modern portrait of a young woman is a scarce example of mid-century painting by Elizabeth Catlett. Most of Catlett's paintings, of which only about a dozen are recorded today, are portraits in oil or tempera from her 1940s New York period. This work is part of the artist's important body of work exploring the representation of African American women. This large image shows Catlett's transition in her figuration from the modernist stylization of the late 1940s to realism in the early 1950s.
The painting was made at an important juncture in her career, during a period of great production as a member of the Taller de Gráfica Popular. Catlett produced a large body of graphic work - taking a break from her sculpture while raising her young family of three sons. She first exhibited her linoleum cut Sharecropper in 1951 in Atlanta. Between 1953-54, Catlett created a series of a dozen linoleum cuts of African American heroes and heroines from Crispus Attucks to Paul Robeson. She then returned to making sculpture in 1955.
Estimate
$75,000 – $100,000
Robert cromartie (1929 - 2007)
Portrait of an African American Solider .
Oil on linen canvas, 1954. 863x698 mm; 34x27½ inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Philadelphia.
Executed four years after Robert Neal's Rearguard, this early portrayal of a Black man in service of his nation is poised with confidence and cool. Depicted in rich hues of green, yellow, and red during a period when there were few African American soldiers in military service, Cromartie paints this figure to illuminate society's selective memory and to remember the often missing narratives.
Robert Cromartie was born in Cumberland, South Carolina, in 1929, with his family later moving to West Philadelphia for improved living conditions. Cromartie completed his formal education in the Philadelphia Public School System, graduating from West Philadelphia High School. He pursued his love of art by studying the subject at the college level for two years. In 1951, Cromartie enlisted in the United States Army and was honorably discharged after two years of service. Following his military service, he worked for the U.S. Postal Service for many years. His true passion was art, and he opened Cromartie's Awards in West Philadelphia, at 60th and Chestnut Streets, where he would work on his art and teach the trade to his many apprentices. He married Myrtle Jones in 1956 and they traveled throughout Africa.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Alvin marriott (1902 - 1992)
Untitled (Head of a Man).
Painted wood carving, 1955. 305x127x165 mm; 12x5x6½ inches. Incised "Marriott" and dated, rear lower edge.
Provenance: private collection, Connecticut.
This handsome, modernist bust we believe is the first work of this important Jamaican sculptor to come to auction. Both his 1955 Banana Man and his 1962 Boysie wood carvings are in the collection of the National Gallery of Jamaica. In addition, his wood carving of Head was used on the Jamaican 25 cents postage stamp, issued in 1984.
Born in St. Andrew, Jamaica, Marriott began working as a furniture maker and carver in the 1930s. He received a scholarship from the British Council in 1947 to enroll at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London. There, Marriott received his first formal art training; he made such an impression that he was retained as a lecturer for the following academic year. He then taught at the Jamaica School of Arts and Crafts from 1955-61. Marriott left this position when he accepted a commission to create the 1962 monumental bronze statue The Athlete, inspired by Arthur Wint, winner of Jamaica's first Gold Medal in 1948.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Henry w. bannarn (1910 - 1965)
Sam’s Luncheonette, Brooklyn, NY .
Oil on canvas, 1957. 609x762 mm; 24x30 inches.
Provenance: estate of the artist; private collection, New York (2017).
Around 1949, after concluding his military service in South Carolina, Henry Bannarn returned to New York. Bannarn first worked from his home studio in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, then, three years later, in a brownstone in Bedford Stuyvesant on the corner of Lafayette and Marcy Avenues. From his fourth floor studio, in Sam’s Luncheonette, he recorded the demolition of a neighboring building that was located on the Northeast corner of the intersection. He also documented the change that was occurring in his neighborhood including the growth of public spaces and the public school system.
Estimate
$20,000 – $30,000
Haywood “bill” rivers (1922 - 2001)
The Dance .
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1955-59. 635x762 mm; 25x30 inches. Signed in pencil across the verso.
Provenance: the artist, Paris; James and Laura M. Kleege, New York; thence by descent, private collection, Indiana; private collection, New York, acquired at Swann Galleries, February 3, 2010.
Exhibited: Louis B. Comfort Tiffany Foundation, New York, with the label on the frame back. With the artist's name, address, the artist's agent, Gallery Parma, and its address and the name of the owner, James Kleege, handwritten on the printed label. Parma Gallery exhibited other abstract painters such as George Dunbar, Robert Klippel and Felrath Hines in the mid to late 1950s.
The Dance is a wonderful mid-century abstraction by this overlooked artist. This is the earliest abstract painting by Haywood Rivers that we have been able to locate. After returning from Paris in 1952, the artist continued to be inspired by Henri Matisse, which is particularly evident in his abstract painting with its flat areas of pattern and color.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
Beauford delaney (1901 - 1979)
Untitled (Composition in Yellow, Orange and Red) .
Oil on paper mounted on linen canvas, circa 1958-59. 1346x965 mm; 53x38 inches.
Provenance: the estate of the artist, Derek L. Spratley court appointed administrator, with estate ink stamp verso; private collection, New York.
Beauford Delaney made this beautiful work on paper during the height of his Parisian abstract period. Delaney’s masterful intertwining of layers of paint reflects his growing bold expression with color during his period exhibiting with Galerie Paul Facchetti. Delaney began working in oil on paper in the late 1950s, and a number of these large works of oil on paper by Beauford Delaney were in the artist’s estate. This mid-career abstraction is his largest work on paper to come to auction.
Estimate
$40,000 – $60,000
Beauford delaney (1901 - 1979)
Untitled .
Watercolor on cream wove paper, 1956. 450x335 mm; 17½x13¼ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, Madame Solange du Closel, Paris; private collection, New York.
Exhibited: Beauford Delaney, Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color, Columbia Global Centers, Paris, February 4 - February 29, 2016.
Illustrated: Monique Wells and Laurence Choko, Beauford Delaney, Resonance of Form and Vibration of Color, p. 31.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Untitled .
Oil and ink on stiff wove paper, 1957. 282x279 mm; 11⅛x11 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired from Bill Hodges Gallery, New York; private collection, California.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
Bob thompson (1937 - 1966)
The Chase .
Oil on masonite board, 1958. 483x550 mm; 19x21⅝ inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right recto. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "P-town" in oil across the verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, New York; thence by descent, private collection, New York.
The Chase is an extraordinary and fascinating painting by Bob Thompson - an early oil from his breakout period in Provincetown. In the summer of 1958, Thompson spent time painting in Provincetown and taking classes at the Seong Moy School of Painting and Graphic Arts. There he began incorporating figurative elements to his abstract painting, and befriended fellow resident artists Emilio Cruz and Gandy Brodie. This brief period begins with the painting The Funeral of Jan Müller , Thompson's homage to the influential German emigré artist whose work he encountered in Provincetown but who passed away shortly before Thompson arrived on the Cape. That summer, Thompson produced an expressive figurative body of work painted in oil in a dark somber palette on masonite board. Many of his paintings were exhibited in the 1958 Provincetown Arts Festival sponsored by the Chrysler Museum, 13 of which were purchased by art benefactor Walter Chrylser. The Funeral of Jan Müller, Myron Kunin Collection of American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, is featured in the current traveling exhibition Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine, curated by Diana Tuite, Katz Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Colby College Museum of Art.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
Thomas sills (1914 - 2000)
Untitled (Abstraction in Black) .
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1958-59. 1016x1245 mm; 40x49 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection (1986.)
A similar black painting entitled Forest 1958 which was shown in Thomas Sills - Painting, the artist's 1959 solo exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery. Additionally, another Burnt Forest by Sills was lent by Betty Parsons to a 1959 University of Colorado Exhibition of Paintings, 12th Annual Creative Arts Program.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Untitled .
Mixed media on textured brown wove paper, 1959. 457x610 mm; 18x24 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Netherlands; private collection, New Orleans.
This dynamic composition is an early example of Sam Middleton's abstract painting at the beginning of his European period. After his 1944 wartime service with the Merchant Marines, Middleton moved to Greenwich Village in New York. A part of the Village scene in the early 1950s, according to his obituary in The New York Times, he was a regular at the Cedar Tavern and friends of Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. Middleton then moved in 1955 to Mexico, following the path of Elizabeth Catlett, and adopted his signature technique of paint, gouache and collage.
By 1959, Middleton left the United States permanently, moving to Spain, Sweden, and then Denmark. While living in Copenhagen, Middleton joined many other American expat artists including Clifford Jackson, Walter Williams and Herbert Gentry. In 1962, he settled in Holland where he lived in Amsterdam for the remainder of his career.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Untitled .
Gouache, ink and collage on illustration board, 1961. 440x620 mm; 17½x24½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Netherlands.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Elaine crossley (1925 - 1996)
Untitled (Abstraction) .
Oil on canvas board, 1960. 609x447 mm; 24x17⅝ inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right corner.
Provenance: estate of the artist; private collection, MA.
Born October 3, 1925, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Elaine Crossley was creative and intellectually curious. She began writing poetry before later taking up drawing and finally painting. Bound to her pragmatic parents, Crossley wanted to major in art and study at the Cincinnati Art Academy but was persuaded to pursue home economics at the University of Cincinnati, which she did, all the while continuing to draw and paint. Crossley took art courses at the Art Institute of Chicago while living in Chicago with her husband, Frank Crossley, from 1952 to 1966. He was a metallurgical engineer who minored in fine art himself and encouraged his partner's artistic interests. After moving to California, she studied ceramics and jewelry making.
Crossley's expressions explore composition, color, space, and balance. Her designs consist of geometric and architectural forms, or landscapes with sensuous, undulating shapes. Most are outlined in black; some are angry, playful, and humorous. Inspired by artists of previous generations, Crossley identified the core of her artwork:
“[It comes from an] ancient art form, originating in Sudan, and used in much of ceremonial and ritual design in African artifacts. Although I am often identified as a cubist, I consider my style very personal and unique—an expression of myself. As an abstract painter, I am strongly influenced by African geometric designs. Here I must explain that I did not ‘lift’ a style from Africa but extended the expression of an established form. Abstract art is prevalent in Oceanic art, the islands of the Pacific, where Black people remain today producing the same designs for wall coverings, clothing, fabrics, and crafts…We, as Black people, owe it to our posterity to salvage our culture. We can do this only by becoming informed about those things that depict us as a people. We must not limit our scope and eclipse our diverse and abundant contributions. I do not paint the Black experience. I am a Black woman who paints what she feels, thus expressing and sharing her Black experience."
After living in Illinois, the Crossleys relocated to Palo Alto, California, then to Granite Bay (near Sacramento) in 1986. She exhibited extensively in Californian venues including the Triton Museum, Santa Clara, Fine Arts Gallery, Mountain View, Arts Associates West, San Francisco, Berkeley Museum, the Center for the Visual Arts in Oakland, and the University of Indiana. Crossley was artist-in-residence at the Berkeley Plaza Gallery and the Ebony Museum of Art, both in Oakland, where her works were often on display over several decades. She lectured on art and exhibited at the University of California-Berkeley and in Sacramento. Butler p. 30.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Robert colescott (1925 - 2009)
Untitled (Nude in a Landscape) .
Watercolor and pencil on heavy wove paper, circa early 1960s. 571x457 mm; 22½x18 inches. Signed in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, New Orleans.
This watercolor by Robert Colescott is a scarce early work on paper from his Portland period. After completing an MA at the University of California at Berkley in 1952, Colescott accepted a teaching position at Portland State University, where he was on staff from 1957 to 1966. While living in Portland, he was represented by Fountain Gallery, where his work was included in the gallery's inaugural exhibition and he was given his first solo show in 1963.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Aftermath .
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1960. 762x1168 mm; 30x46 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: the collection of the Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., Chicago, with the label on the frame back; private collection.
Illustrated: "The JPC Art Collection", Ebony, December 1979, Vol. 29, No. 2, p. 39: "Black Artists", Ebony, October 1998, Vol. 53, No. 12, p. 156:
This beautifully painted but stark urban scene is an excellent example of Hughie Lee-Smith's mid-career painting. Aftermath is a significant painting, and was part of one of the nation's most celebrated corporate collections of African American Art.
Aftermath epitomizes Lee-Smith's unique view of urban decay, a vision of a modern, existential landscape with Surrealist undertones. It appears closely related to his Slum Lad, circa 1960, in the collection of the Flint Institute of Arts. Aftermath depicts the same background of a crumbling facade. The three bright pink and yellow balloons in the foreground suggest the recent presence of young people, alienation and a fleeting, fragile moment. Lee-Smith's fluttering flags and a distant city on the horizon further denote an empty space. Another similar untitled painting with a figure walking away from the viewer was sold at Swann Galleries on April 7, 2016.
Lee-Smith returned often to show his work and teach in Detroit after moving to New York in 1958. Lee-Smith was represented in New York by the Petite Gallery and then Janet Nessler Gallery through the 1960s. King-Hammond p. 57.
Estimate
$120,000 – $180,000
Jacob lawrence (1917 - 2000)
Two Rebels .
Lithograph on cream Rives paper, 1963. 775x554 mm; 30½x20¼ inches (sheet). Edition of 50. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Ed 50" in pencil, lower margin. Printed by George C. Miller & Son, New York. Published by Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York.
Two Rebels, based on Jacob Lawrence's 1963 painting of the same name, depicts two beaten men being carried off by police. It is the artist's first recorded print and his only print from the period that relates to the Civil Rights struggle. Nesbett L63-1.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Benny andrews (1930 - 2006)
Mask of a Life .
Oil and collage on linen canvas, 1961. 413x330 mm; 16¼x13 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right recto. Signed, titled and dated in oil, verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, New York.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
First Season .
Oil on cotton canvas, 1962. 965x711 mm; 38x28 inches. Signed, titled and dated in ink, verso.
Provenance: private collection, Maryland.
Sam Gilliam painted First Season in his first year living in Washington, DC. This figurative painting shows his transition towards abstraction, and is one of his earliest paintings to come to auction.
Gilliam completed his MA in painting at the University of Louisville in 1961 where he befriended painter Kenneth Victor Young. At the time, Gilliam was drawn to Bay Area figurative paintings - in particular, Nathan Oliveira and David Park. Jonathan Binstock writes, "Bay Area figuration was important to him because it was abstract, or at least because it represented a way for him to further the abstract quotient in his own work". Oliveira's influence can be seen in this painting. In 1962, Gilliam moved to Washington, DC to marry Washington Post reporter Dorothy Butler. Upon the recommendation of James A. Porter, whom Gilliam had sought out for advice, he took a job teaching art at McKinley High School. The following year, Gilliam had his first one person exhibition at the Adams Morgan Gallery. Binstock pp. 8-12.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
Richmond barthé (1901 - 1989)
Woman with Turban .
Bronze with a brown patina, 1962. Approximately 304x127x127 mm; 12x5x5 inches. Incised with the artist's signature at the rear of the base.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, Los Angeles; thence by descent private collection, Los Angeles.
Illustrated: Samella Lewis, Barthé: His Life in Art , p. 209 (another cast).
This beautiful and poignant sculpture is a later work by Richmond Barthé from his Jamaica period. This scarce bronze has not come to auction before.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
Emilio cruz (1938 - 2004)
Untitled (Three Figures) .
Color pastels on wove paper, 1963. 387x596 mm; 15¼x23½ inches. Signed and dated in pastel, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, New York; private collection, New Jersey (1978).
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Charles alston (1907 - 1977)
Family in Cityscape (Family Group - Cityscape) .
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1964-66. 762x1524 mm; 30x60 inches. With the artist’s estate ink stamp, lower right recto, and on the stretcher bars, verso.
Provenance: the estate of the artist, with a hand-written label (and alternate title) verso; Essie Green Galleries, New York; private collection, New York.
Exhibited: In the Spirit of Resistance: African-American Modernists & the Mexican Muralist School , traveling exhibition, 1996-98, including the Studio Museum in Harlem, October 2 - December 8, 1996.
Illustrated: Lizette LeFalle Collins. In the Spirit of Resistance: African-American Modernists & the Mexican Muralist School , pl. 30, p. 119.
This modernist oil painting of an African American family in front of a city skyline is a large study for an unrealized mural project. As a result of his many mural commissions, Alston excelled at compositions that included multiple figures - from his celebrated 1936 WPA Harlem Hospital and 1949 Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company murals to the lesser known 1957 Our Constitution at City College of New York. This painting is similar in its composition to the Alston’s 1964 mosaic mural Man on the Threshold of Space for the Harriet Tubman Junior High School, PS 154 in Harlem. By 1976, Alston completed two more mosaic murals, Equal Justice Under the Law and The Family of Man , for the Bronx County Family and Criminal Court buildings with more abstract figures.
The subject of this painting was also a familiar one to Alston at the time. It is part of a significant body of work, his series of Family paintings, made in the late 1960s. Alston’s important modern portrait Family (Family #1) in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art was painted in 1955. The next seven paintings in the series were painted between 1965-1968; Alston’s Family #3 , 1966 is also in this 30x60 inch horizontal format.
Estimate
$80,000 – $120,000
Walter williams (1920 - 1988)
Girl With Butterflies #2.
Color linoleum cut on thin imitation Japan paper, 1964. 507x660 mm; 20x26 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated, inscribed “imp” and numbered 32/210 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Earl hill (1927 - 1985)
At the Pump .
Oil on masonite board, circa 1965. 762x305 mm; 30x12 inches. Signed in oil, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
This modern oil painting typifies the mid-career work of artist, illustrator and educator Earl Hill. Hill’s paintings from the 1960s emphasize the humanity of ordinary individuals, depicting their work and daily experiences. Born in New York in 1927, Hill spent much of his youth in Bells Mill, a small town in rural Virginia. He returned to New York to attend New York University, where he studied art with Hale Woodruff. He graduated in 1951 with a degree in education and went on to obtain his master’s degree from the City College of New York in 1960. Hill taught art appreciation in public schools in New York, Baltimore, and the Virgin Islands while continuing to study painting at a variety of institutions. Hill retired from teaching in 1984, a year before his death. His paintings are found in The Hewitt Collection of African-American Art, Harvey B. Gantt Center, Charlotte, NC. Biography courtesy of the Harvey B. Gantt Center.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
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
Jeff donaldson (1932 - 2004)
Jazz Drummer .
Watercolor on wove paper, 1961. 546x381 mm; 21½x15 inches. Signed and inscribed with the artist’s address, ”5319 Ellis, Chicago, IL. No. 7-3532” in ink, verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, Illinois, thence by descent; private collection; Illinois.
Jeff Donaldson grew up in Pinebluff, AK, where he attended the University of Arkansas, establishing the university's fine arts program. He then moved to Chicago, where he earned an MFA at the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology, and then a PhD in African and African American art history at Northwestern University. Donaldson became a key member of the Organization for Black American Culture, and helped organize the 1967 Wall of Respect mural. Donaldson was a founding member of AfriCOBRA in 1968, writing their 1970 manifesto Ten in Search of a Nation and helping define its aesthetic through his paintings and prints. After lecturing at Northwestern until 1970, Donaldson joined the faculty at Howard University, where he had a distinguished tenure as a professor and administrator over a thirty year career.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Jeff donaldson (1932 - 2004)
Untitled (Portrait) .
Pen and brown and black ink on cream wove paper, 1968. 101x152 mm; 4x6 inches. Signed and dated "3 Nov. 1968" in brown ink, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, New Orleans.
This scarce, intimate sketch by Jeff Donaldson is a depature from the bold imagery associated with the AfriCOBRA movement that he co-founded the same year.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Barbara jones-hogu (1938 - 2017)
Untitled .
Woodcut on cream wove paper, 1967-68. 381x609 mm; 15x24 inches, irregular margins. Artist’s proof, from a small edition of proofs printed by the artist. Signed, titled, dated 1967-68 and inscribed “Artist Proof” in pencil, lower margin.
Provenance: the estate of Barbara Jones-Hogu; private collection, Illinois.
This scarce, early print precedes Jones-Hogu’s work with AfriCOBRA.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Emma amos (1937 - 2020)
Gold Face Type .
Color screenprint on cream wove paper, 1966. 469x331 mm; 18½x13⅜ inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 3/22 in pencil, lower margin.
A very good impression of this rare, early screenprint, with vibrant colors. Another impression is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
In 1960, Amos moved to New York and made prints in Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop. In 1964, she became the sole female member of the Spiral Group collective. By 1966, the group disbanded and Amos completed her MA in art education from New York University. The same year Amos was painting dynamic, colorful portraits that defied conventions like Baby ,1966, collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Flower Sniffer, collection of the Brooklyn Museum. In Gold Face Type , Amos created an inventive self-portrait - one in which she is both reflectively looking over her shoulder and directly confronting the viewer.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Charles searles (1937 - 2004)
Untitled (Man Napping) .
Gouache and watercolor on thick wove paper, 1968. 560x763 mm; 22x30 inches. Signed and dated in gouache, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, New Jersey.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Inge hardison (1904 - 2016)
Sojourner Truth .
Bonded bronze with a blue-green patina, 1968. Approximately 571x254x102 mm; 22½x10x4 inches. Incised "Inge" and "1968" on the base, rear edge.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
This expressive figure of Sojourner Truth is a significant work by sculptor Inge Hardison. Despite a lengthy career as a sculptor and living to the age of 102, Hardison's work is not widely known today beyond her popular series of small cast busts of historical figures Negro Giants in History in 1963 and Ingenious Americans in the late 1960s.
Born in Portsmouth, VA, Hardison's family moved to Brooklyn in the 1930s where she pursued many creative interests including acting and dance. Journalist Alice Bernstein in her article, "Inge Hardison at 100" in the International Review of African American Art wrote how after graduating from high school, Hardison landed a role in the 1936 Broadway production of Sweet River, George Abbott’s adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which won her rave reviews. Hardison also appeared in The Country Wife with Ruth Gordon, and in the 1946 production of Anna Lucasta, co-starring with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. She later attended Vassar College, majoring in music and creative writing, and later took art classes at the Arts Students League in New York. She also taught with Victor Lowenfeld at Hampton University from 1955-46.
Hardison made a wide range of figurative sculptures including several large public works such as the life-size 1957 bronze Mother and Child at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and the 7-foot abstract figure Jubilee at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Hardison was the only woman founding member of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters (BAAL), an African American cultural organization created in 1969 for the preservation and promotion of Black culture.
The original sculpture of Sojourner Truth was presented to Nelson Mandela by New York Governor Mario Cuomo in 1990. Other casts of this work are in the collection of the New York State Harlem Art Collection and the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument of the National Woman's Party, Washington, DC. Her artwork is also found today in the collections of the Princeton University Art Museum, the Detroit Historical Museum, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York. iraaa.museum.hampton.edu; St. James pp. 229-30.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Samella lewis (1924 - )
20th Century Prophets .
Woodcut on newsprint, 1968. 273x140 mm; 11⅞x5⅞ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 13/35 in pencil, lower margin.
Another impression of this scarce print, entitled Twentieth Century Wisemen, was exhibited in the 2012-13 traveling exhibition Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles 1960-1980. Jones p. 249.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Martin Luther King, Jr. - Mountain Top .
Color screenprint on wove paper, 1968. 760x495 mm; 29⅞x19½ 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
Beuford smith (1941 - )
Man Crying/Martin Luther King Jr. Essay, 125th St. NYC .
Silver print, 1968. 184x114 mm; 7⅜x4½ inches. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, verso. From the artist's series Martin Luther King, Jr. Essay .
Other prints of this photograph are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, with the studio stamp on verso; private collection, New York.
Taken on 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, Man Crying depicts the reaction to the physical assault of a white delivery person after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The subject cried, “please don’t attack him, leave him alone" - echoing the non-violent ethos of Dr. King Jr. Beuford Smith's Martin Luther King Jr. series is an emotional set of photographs exploring the Black community's anguish the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Engaging the use of shadow, the subjects are enveloped by darkness, a metaphor for sorrow and loss.
Influenced by fellow Kamoinge members, specifically founding president Roy DeCarava, Smith adopted a documentary style with a concentration on Black urban life as the central theme and consistent confrontation of human emotion. He was a founding member and later served as president of Kamoinge, an organization founded to document and preserve the history and culture of the African Diaspora with integrity and insight for humanity through the lens of Black photographers. The name comes from the Kikuyu language of Kenya and means a group of people acting together.
Founder of Cesaire Photo Agency and the Black Photographers Annual (1973 - 1981), Smith is one of the great social documentary photographers that emerged from the 1960s. Self-taught, Smith was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He taught photography at the Cooper Union, Hunter College, and the Brooklyn Museum. Smith received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 1990 and 2000, a Light Work Artist-in-Residence Fellowship in 1999, and an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship in 1998.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Anthony barboza (1944 - )
Jacksonville, Florida .
Silver print, 1968. 330x330 mm; 3⅞x5⅞ inches. Signed, titled and dated in ink, verso. With the artist’s studio ink stamp, verso.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Untitled (Nude) .
Pencil on cream wove paper, circa 1970. 482x304 mm; 19x12 inches, full margins. Signed in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Florida.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Artis lane (1927 - )
Mermaid .
Oil on linen canvas, 1970. 914x610 mm; 36x24 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, New Orleans.
Born in Ontario, Canada, Artis Lane studied at the Art College in Toronto, the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI and the University of California in Los Angeles. In 1984, the artist had one of her first solo exhibitions at the Brockman Gallery in Los Angeles. Today, Lane is celebrated for her portraits in both sculpture and painting of famous and historic figures. In 2007, the California African American Museum of Los Angeles mounted a major retrospective exhibition of her work. In 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama unveiled Lane’s bronze bust of Sojourner Truth, which became the first sculpture of a Black woman installed in the U.S. Capitol.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
John whitmore (1948 - )
Sleep .
Oil on cotton canvas, 1970. 279x305 mm; 11x12 inches. Signed, titled and dated in oil, verso.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
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.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Charles white (1918 - 1979)
Wanted Poster Series #11 and #11a (Positive and Negative Image).
A pair of lithographs printed in sepia on buff wove paper, 1970. Both 572x406 mm; 22½x16 inches, full margins. Both signed, dated and numbered 6/20 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by the Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, NM, with the blind stamps lower right. From the Wanted Poster Series.
Provenance: Heritage Gallery, Los Angeles, with the gallery labels on the frame backs; private collection, New Jersey.
Other impressions of this pair of prints can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Norton Simon Museum. Gedeon Ea21.
Estimate
$12,000 – $18,000
Barbara jones-hogu (1938 - 2017)
Nation Time II .
Color screenprint on lavender-colored wove paper, 1970. 508x727 mm; 20x28⅜ inches. Artist's print, aside from an edition of ten or fewer impressions printed by the artist. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Artist's Print" in pencil, lower margin.
Provenance: collection of the artist, thence by descent to William Jones; private collection, Illinois.
Another impression was exhibited in We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, Brooklyn Museum, April 21 - September 17, 2017 and Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties, Brooklyn Museum, March 7 - July 13, 2014.
Illustrated: Faheem Majeed, Barbara Wildholmand, Zoé Whitley and Rebecca Zorach. Barbara Jones-Hogu: Resist, Relate, Unite , p. 68.
Another impression of this screenprint is in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.
Nation Time II is a scarce print by AfriCOBRA founding member Barbara Jones-Hogu.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Lev mills (1938 - 2021)
I…
Color collagraph, relief and etching on cream wove paper, 1970-72. 682x482 mm; 27x19 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 3/25 in pencil, lower margin.
Another impression is in the collection of the Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Lev Mills uses layered images to create substantive meaning in I... . The culmination of a tumultuous period in American history and the systematic attack on the Black Panther movement are the geneses for Mills' print which present the issues to the viewer in an esoteric manner.
Born in Tallahassee, Florida, Lev Mills lived and worked in Atlanta, Georgia from 1973. Mills studied printmaking at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in the late 1960s. 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. 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. Several museums hold work by Mills including Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the British Museum, London, and MOCA Georgia.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Herbert gentry (1919 - 2003)
Three color lithographs.
Each on cream wove paper, 1970. Each 558x457 mm; 22x18 inches, full margins. Each signed and numbered 60/150 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Million Dollar Ideas .
Collage of various printed papers, gouache and ink on wood panel, 1969. 780x2140 mm; 30¾x84¼ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Netherlands (1991); private collection, Netherlands.
Million Dollar Ideas is a significant artwork by Sam Middleton, a tour-de-force of his improvisational technique, combining Abstract Expressionist painting with densely collaged surfaces of various found papers from billboards, magazines and newspapers. It is a summation of a modernist approach that reflected not only in his artistic practice, but his expatriate life and great interest in jazz music. Middleton once described, "the artist is, like a human mirror, reflecting ideas, images, feelings and the impressions of his environment as he sees and feels them. In this sense collage is a chain of connecting ideas and expressions like fragments of that broken mirror, gathered and mended”. This 7-foot long monumental work by Middleton is the largest work of the artist to appear at auction.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Untitled .
Watercolor and inks on handmade paper, 1970-71. 445x343 mm; 17½x13½ inches. Signed and dated “70” in ink, upper left. Signed and dated “71” in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Washington, DC; private collection, New Orleans.
Estimate
$25,000 – $35,000
Kenneth victor young (1933 - 2017)
Untitled (Abstraction) .
Acrylic on buff blotting paper, 1971. 635x737 mm; 25x29 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right, and inscribed indistinctly in ink, lower left.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; Francis Frost Fine Art, Newport, RI; private collection, New Jersey.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
Alma thomas (1891 - 1978)
Untitled (Atmospheric Effects Series) .
Acrylic on heavy wove paper, 1971. 565x762 mm; 22½x30 inches. Initialed "AWT" and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: Anderson Fine Arts, Jersey City, NJ (late 1980s); private collection.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
Robert blackburn (1920 - 2003)
Space Shape .
Color lithograph on soft Japan paper, 1972. 560x495 mm; 22x19½ inches, full margins. Signed and titled in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Victor seach (1918 - 1991)
Untitled .
Acrylic on linen canvas, 1972. 914x636 mm; 36x25⅝ inches. Signed and dated in acrylic, lower right.
Provenance: the estate of the artist, Brussels, Belgium; private collection Brussels, Belgium; private collection, Boston (1995).
This canvas from Victor Seach is a great representation of his practice rooted in composition géométrique. Born in New York City, Seach studied at the National Academy of Design. He lived and worked in Harlem before serving in the Army during World War II in Europe. When he returned to New York City, he set up a studio in Greenwich Village and focused on painting abstraction. Due to a lack of support from the gallery scene, Seach returned to Europe in 1962 and settled in Belgium in 1971. Seach worked closely and exhibited with African American artists Harold Cousins and Joan Aghib, who were eventually dubbed the Three Americans in Brussels.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Kenneth victor young (1933 - 2017)
Night Push .
Acrylic on cotton canvas, 1972. 1022x1022 mm; 40¼x40¼ inches. Signed, titled and dated in ink across the upper canvas overflap, verso.
Provenance: private collection, Washington, DC.
Exhibited: Franz Bader Gallery, Washington, DC, with the gallery label on the stretcher bars, verso. Titled Putting Down and dated 1971 on the label
With its dark, floating orbs and vivid colors, Night Push epitomizes the unique and striking abstract painting of Kenneth Victor Young. Painting wet into wet, Young achieved these compositions of floating orbs and haloes suggesting forms in a floating or fluid space. With his distinctive style, Young became associated in the early 1970s with the rise of the Washington Color School; in 1968, he had his solo exhibition at the Franz Bader Gallery in Washington, DC, which represented him until 1977.
Born in Kentucky, Young's career began in the sciences - he studied and taught physics at Indiana University and chemical engineering at the University of Louisville. In the early 1960s, Young switched his studies to pursue visual art, joining a circle of artists at the University of Louisville including G. Caliman Coxe, Sam Gilliam and Bob Thompson. After moving to Washington, DC in 1964, he worked at the Smithsonian Institution for over 35 years as an exhibition installation designer. He was also an art instructor at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC. Young also had solo exhibitions at the Carl Van Vechten Gallery at Fisk University in 1973, and at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC in 1974. His paintings have also been included in exhibitions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery and the Washington Project for the Arts, and are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art and the Perez Art Museum Miami.
Estimate
$50,000 – $75,000
Dindga mccannon (1947 - )
Carol and Friend .
Hand-colored linoleum cut on cream paper, 1971. 219x127 mm; 8⅜x5 inches, full margins. Artist's proof, from a small edition printed by the artist. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Artist proof #4" in ink, lower margin.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Illinois (2013).
This print depicts Carol Blank, an artist and founding member of Where We At: Black Women Artists. The collective consisted of such artists such as Kay Brown, Faith Ringgold, Ann Tanksley, and Dindga McCannon and was intended to serve as a source of empowerment for African American women. It sought to provide a means for them to explore issues of Black women's sensibility and aesthetics through their respective practices and space to exhibit their artwork.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Benny andrews (1930 - 2006)
Boys Playing Marbles .
Pen and ink on cream wove paper, 1972. 457x305mm; 18x12 inches. Signed and dated “Aug 9, 1972” in ink, lower right recto. Signed titled, dated, and inscribed “Done in Cortona, Italy” in ink, lower right verso.
Provenance: purchased directly from the artist; private collection, New York.
In the summer of 1972, Benny Andrews completed a two month trip through Europe visiting Belgium, Italy and France.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Benny andrews (1930 - 2006)
Dew Drop Inn (The Thirties) .
Pen and ink on cream wove paper, 1972. 457x305mm; 18x12 inches. Signed and dated “Aug 9, 1972” in ink, lower right recto. Signed titled, dated, and inscribed “12x18” and “Done in Cortona, Italy” in ink, lower right verso.
Provenance: purchased directly from the artist; private collection, New York.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Mother and Child .
Color screenprint, 1972. 500x147 mm; 19 3/4x16 3/8 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 171/200 in pencil, lower margin. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#59.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Joseph holston (1944 - )
Girl with View-Master .
Oil on canvas, 1973. 762x609 mm; 30x24 inches. Signed and dated in oil, upper right recto. Inscribed "12/73, Log No 053" in pencil on the stretcher bar.
Provenance: Mr. Louis Allan Ford, Washington, DC.
A Washington, DC native, Joseph Holston is a figurative painter, printmaker, and illustrator. He studied art independently by enrolling in art classes throughout the Washington DC area, including lessons with the portraitist Marcos Blahove (1928 - 2012). Girl with View-Master depicts a young subject that he portrays in other works in the 1970s such as Girl-n-Flute. Holston's 1970s works show the influence of Rembrandt and his study of the European Old Masters.
Holston's artwork was featured in the group exhibition Seeing Differently: The Phillips Collects for a New Century , The Phillips Collection, March 6 - September 12, 2021. His works are in many museum collections, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, Howard University, the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Barbara chase-riboud (1939 - )
Black Door .
Charcoal and charcoal pencil on cream wove paper, 1974. 648x495 mm; 25½x19½ inches. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired from Anderson Fine Arts, Jersey City, NJ; private collection (1990).
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Emma amos (1938 - 2020)
Dream Girl .
Color etching and aquatint on cream Rives, 1975. 381x445 mm; 15x17½ inches, full margins. Artist’s proof, one of five aside from the edition of 26. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed “ED. 26 A.P. 1/5 A.K.” in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Anthony Kirk at Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop, New York.
A superb, richly inked impression of this scarce print - other impressions are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
The Fisherman
Oil monotype on Arches paper, circa 1975. 750x1055 mm; 29½x41½ inches. Signed in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Pick Up Group .
Oil monotype on Arches paper, circa 1975. 742x1041 mm; 29½x41⅛ inches. Signed in pencil, upper right.
Provenance: private collection.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Pepper Jelly Lady .
Color lithograph, circa 1975. 660x540 mm; 25¾x21⅛ inches. Artist’s proof, aside from the numbered edition of 150. Signed, inscribed “AP” and numbered 24/30 in pencil, lower right. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#56.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Vincent smith (1929 - 2004)
Rimbaud’s House in Harar .
Etching, 1975. 750x559 mm; 14¾x22 inches, full margins. Artist’s proof, aside from an unknown edition. Signed, titled and inscribed and “A/P” in pencil, lower margin. Printed at Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop, New York.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Richard mayhew (1924 - )
Moody Space Blues .
Etching printed in brown on cream wove paper, 1975. 406x558 mm;16x22 inches. Signed, titled and numbered 24/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed at Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Studio, New York.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Freddie styles (1944 - )
C Series, #4 .
Acrylic on illustration board, 1977. 558x711 mm; 22x28 inches. Signed and dated in acrylic, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, Chicago.
Another painting from Styles' series C Series, #2 is in the Georgia State Art Collection.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Leon n. hicks (1933 - )
Portrait VIII, #2 .
Color engraving on wove paper, 1976. 304x203 mm; 12x8 inches, wide margins. Artist’s proof, aside from an edition of less than 10. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed “Artist’s Proof” in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Elliott pinkney (1934 - )
King.
Color screenprint on cream wove paper, 1975. 482x342 mm; 19x13½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 11/150 in pencil, lower margin.
Provenance: collection of Evangeline J. Montgomery; the estate of Carroll Ann Parrott Blue, TX.
Exhibited: I Remember: Images of the Civil Rights Movement 1963-1993, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, August 28 - October 10, 1993, then traveled to, the Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, 1993 - 1994; In the Spirit of Martin, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, January 12, 2002 - March 30, 2004.
Elliot Pinkney's split-level print is composed of black, red, and green, featuring six Black male figures in bondage above a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. imposed in a spiral background. The color use symbolizes pan-Africanism and counteracts with the men in chains, while strengthening the image of Dr. King, Jr.
A native of Brunswick, Georgia, Pinkney moved to Southern California after serving in the U.S. Air Force. After his term of service and time in Alaska and California, he returned to Southland, CA to obtain a BFA degree from Woodbury University. Inspired by reading comic books as a child, his creativity led him to produce graphically inclined prints and murals. As a muralist, printmaker, and poet, he became a fixture in the community of Compton. In the early 1970s, he was active in the Compton Communicative Arts Academy, where he met director and artist John Outterbridge. While known primarily as a muralist, Pinkney’s printmaking has been shown widely in galleries and museums across the country, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the California Museum of African American Art, and the San Bernardino County Museum.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Napoleon jones-henderson (1943 - )
A Few Words From the Prophet Stevie .
Color screenprint on cream wove paper, 1976. 368x393 mm; 14½x15½ inches, full margins. Edition of 200. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed, "200 imp" and "Sister Barbara" in pencil, lower margin.
Provenance: acquired directly from the estate of the Barbara Jones-Hogu; private collection, Illinois.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum.
A Few Words from the Prophet Stevie is Jones-Henderson's screenprint adaptation of an earlier textile design with the same title. There is tension between the border of the work and the interior. The exterior of the plate contains curvilinear shapes, quotes from American history that question our society, a red, white, and blue border from the American flag, and Klu Klux Klan-shaped stars inspired by Barbara Jones-Hogu's 1969 screenprint, America. In contrast, the interior contains powerful symbols of Black humanity including geometrical shapes, lyrics from Stevie Wonder's politically inclined track You Haven't Done Nothing, and a green, black, and red pyramid that is symbolic of the Black Power Movement.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Jones-Henderson attended the Sorbonne Student Continuum-Student and Artists Center in Paris, France in 1963 for an independent study program in French Art History and Figure Drawing. Upon returning to the United States, he enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago, attaining his BFA in 1971. He went on to earn credits in advanced graduate studies in Fine Arts at Northern Illinois University and earned his MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2005.
In 1969 Jones-Henderson became a member of AfriCOBRA. During the formative years of AfriCOBRA, Jones-Henderson created large pictorial woven tapestries that were included in the group’s series of exhibitions. Over the course of his career, Jones-Henderson served in various academic positions at Malcolm X College, Massachusetts College of Art, Emerson College, Roxbury Community College, and Vermont College of Norwich University. In 2005, Jones-Henderson was appointed associate professor of art at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina. In addition, Jones-Henderson was an artist-in-residence at Towson University, Syracuse University, and the McDonough School.
Jones-Henderson is executive director of the Research Institute of African and African Diaspora Arts, Inc. and Bennu Arts, LLC., in Roxbury, Massachusetts. His artwork is in the collections of the DuSable Museum of African American History, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Southside Community Art Center, Hampton University Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of National Center of Afro-American Artists, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Roots .
Color lithograph on wove paper, 1977. 610x457 mm; 24x18 inches, full margins. Artist's proof, aside from the edition of 150. Signed, titled, inscribed "AP" and numbered 9/10 in pencil, lower margin. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#60.
In conjunction with the groundbreaking 1977 television miniseries, TV Guide commissioned Romare Bearden to design a magazine cover, which this lithograph is based on.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Jacob lawrence (1917 - 2000)
Carpenters .
Offset color lithograph on Rives BFK paper, 1977. 460x562 mm; 18⅛x22⅛ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 18/300 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by George C. Miller & Son, New York. Published by Himan Brown, New York. Nesbett L77-2.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Charles white (1918 - 1979)
Sound of Silence II .
Color lithograph, 1978. 636x877 mm; 25x35¼ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 39/71 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by David Panosh. Published by Hand Graphics, Ltd., Santa Fe, with the blind stamp lower right. Gedeon Ea35.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
George l. wilson (1930 - 2003)
Bus Stop .
Oil on linen canvas, 1978. 355x254 mm; 14x10 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left, recto. Signed and titled in ink across the stretcher bar, verso.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
A New York figurative painter, George Wilson is best known for his sensitive depictions of children from the 1970s. Born in Windsor, NC, he lived and worked in the Bronx, New York. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Contemporary Afro-American Arts at the Brooklyn Museum in 1968, Harlem Artists 69 at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1969, and the Third Annual Atlanta Life Open in 1983. He also frequently exhibited at the Spiral Gallery and the Dorsey Gallery, both in Brooklyn, NY. His paintings are in the collections of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, and Howard University, Washington, DC.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Ernest crichlow (1914 - 2005)
The Sisters .
Color screenprint, 1979. 457x914 mm; 18x36 inches, full margins. Artist’s proof, aside from the edition of 60. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed “A/P” in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Ed O’Connell Photographics, New York, with the blind stamp lower right.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Pilate .
Color lithograph on wove paper, 1979. 515x380 mm; 20¼x15 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 57/300 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Atelier Ettinger, New York, with the blind stamp lower right. Published by Transworld, London. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#82.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Mecklenburg Autumn .
Color lithograph, 1979. 587x457 mm; 23¼x18 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 150/175 in pencil, lower margin. Published by London Graphics, with the ink stamp verso. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#90.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Quilting Time .
Color lithograph, 1979. 460x590 mm; 18x23⅛ inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 128/175 in pencil, lower margin. Geldburd/Rosenberg GG#93.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Rex goreleigh (1902 - 1986)
Untitled (Woman and Children at Stove) .
Oil on linen canvas, 1979. 762x1016 mm; 40x30 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, New Jersey.
This poignant scene is from Rex Goreleigh's important Migrant Series, a series of paintings depicting the rural life in New Jersey of migrant workers, incorporating a political and social awareness with a painterly approach.
Born in Penllyn, Pennsylvania, Goreleigh's family moved to Washington, DC, where he graduated from Dunbar High School. Throughout the 1930s, he was associated with many WPA programs and taught art across the United States. Goreleigh first worked with WPA muralist Ben Shahn in 1934. After a two-year hiatus studying art in Paris, he returned to New York and taught art at the Utopia House under the Federal Arts Project, and later at the Harlem branch of the YMCA. Goreleigh and Norman Lewis also taught under the Federal Art Project in Greensboro, NC, where he remained and married a local librarian. The couple moved to Chicago in 1940, and he worked as an art coordinator for the Schreiner-Bennet advertising agency. From 1944 to 1947, Goreleigh directed the Chicago South Side Community Art Center, succeeding its first director Margaret Burroughs.
In the late 1940s, Goreleigh moved to Princeton, NJ and directed the Princeton Group Arts from 1947 to 1953, a community arts center that provided lessons and organized concerts, lectures, and exhibits. In 1955, he opened his "Studio-on-the-Canal" on Canal Road where he worked for 23 years - and where his friend the artist Hughie Lee-Smith also taught painting classes. Goreleigh's paintings and prints are included in the collections of the New Jersey State Museum, the Paul R. Jones Collection, University of Delaware, and the Harriet and Harmon Kelley Collection of African-American Art, San Antonio.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Richard wyatt, jr. (1955 - )
Anonymous Ancestors #1 .
Charcoal, ink and wash on cream wove paper, 1979. 396x508 mm; 15⅝x20 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, the estate of Carroll Ann Parrott Blue, TX.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Anthony barboza (1944 - )
Michael Jackson .
Silver print, 1979. 330x368 mm; 14x14¼ inches, full margins. Signed, titled and dated in ink, lower margin.
Another print of this photograph is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington, DC.
Photographed with a contemplative gaze and stoic pose, Michael Jackson's portrait was taken by Anthony Barboza around Jackson's 21st birthday. In 1980, Barboza published Black Borders, his portrait series of artists, musicians and writers outlined with a distinctive black border that mimics photo negatives.
Barboza began his career in 1964 at the Kamoinge Workshop in New York City, which Roy DeCarava founded the previous year. A self-taught photographer, Barboza opened a commercial studio in 1969, where he has photographed editorial spreads for Newsweek, Life, The New York Times Magazine, Essence and Vogue, among many other publications. In 1974 and 1976, the New York State Council of the Arts awarded Barboza photography grants, and in 1980, he earned one from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Norman lewis (1909 - 1979)
Untitled .
Oil and ink on cream wove paper, 1979. 508x647 mm; 20x25½ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: acquired from Bill Hodges Gallery, NY, with the label on the frame back; private collection, New York.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
Ed clark (1926 - 2019)
Untitled .
Offset color lithograph, 1979. 600x800 mm; 23x31½ inches, full margins. Signed, dated and numberd 15/200 in pencil, lower margin.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Contemporary Part I
John e. dowell, jr. (1941 - )
Doucement .
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 1980. 596x457 mm; 23½x18 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 25/100 in pencil, lower margin.
Provenance: McDonald’s Corporate Art Collection, Oakbrook, IL (deaccessioned); private collection, Illinois.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia.
John E. Dowell, Jr. is a printmaker, etcher, lithographer, painter, and professor emeritus of printmaking at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Philadelphia. Influenced by the improvisation of Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, and Jackson Pollock as well as modern jazz musicians Miles Davis, Archie Shepp, and Cecil Taylor, Dowell invokes an abstract representation of jazz sheet music.
Philadelphia native and master printmaker, Dowell studied at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University under the tutelage of ceramist Rudolf Staffel. Dowell has received many awards for his work, including the James VanDerZee Award from the Brandywine Workshop and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Dowell’s work is also in the permanent collections of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Worcester Art Museum.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
McArthur Binion (1946 - )
Untitled .
Color lithograph on wove paper, 1980. 584x762 mm; 23x30 inches (sheet). Signed, dated and numbered in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by the artist and the Hollaender Press, New York.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Howardena pindell (1943- )
War Games Disguised II .
Tempera, gouache, postcards, punched paper, thread, nails and plastic toy soldiers on museum board, 1980-81. 343x419 mm; 13 1/2x16 1/2 inches; 508x406 mm; 16x20 inches, including the mount and Plexiglass box. Signed and dated in pencil, lower left and titled in pencil, lower right, on the mount.
Provenance: private collection, New Jersey.
Exhibited: Howardena Pindell: Recent Works on Paper , Monique Knowlton Gallery, New York, NY, April 4 - May 2, 1981, with the gallery label on the frame back.
In 1979, just as Howardena Pindell was beginning the next phase of her career as a professor of art at SUNY, Stony Brook, she 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. War Games Disguised II and lot 123 Mask show how Pindell's experimental assemblage evolved to incorporate political and social themes.
Estimate
$40,000 – $60,000
Howardena pindell (1943- )
Mask .
Tempera, gouache, postcards, punched paper, thread and nails on museum board, 1980-82. 356x305 mm; 14x12 inches; 508x406 mm; 20x16 inches, including the mount and Plexiglass box. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right, and titled in pencil, lower left, on the mount.
Provenance: private collection, New Jersey.
Exhibited: Howardena Pindell: Recent Works on Paper, Monique Knowlton Gallery, New York, NY, April 4 - May 2, 1981, with the gallery label on the frame back.
Estimate
$40,000 – $60,000
Felrath hines (1913 - 1993)
Untitled (Green Composition) .
Oil monotype on wove paper, 1981. 447x200 mm; 17⅝x23⅝. Signed and dated in ink, lower right. Signed and dated in pencil, lower margin.
Provenance: private collection, Maryland.
Untitled (Green Composition) is a late work on paper that morphs Cubism into soft-edged organic abstraction. Hines explores a range of green hues and the relationships of light, line and color.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Felrath hines (1913 - 1993)
Untitled (Square Composition) .
Oil and monotype on wove paper, 1981. 447x200 mm; 17⅝x23⅝. Signed and dated in ink, lower right. Signed and dated in pencil, lower margin.
Provenance: private collection, Maryland.
Untitled (Square Composition) embraces Hines's belief in, "the universal language of pure shapes and colors" with his use of geometry rooted in a Cubist practice. Everett p. 42.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Charles searles (1937 - 2004)
Dance in the Blue Sky I .
Color screenprint on Arches paper, 1982. 540x735 mm; 21¼x28⅞ inches (sheet). Artist's proof, aside from the edition of 18. Signed, dated, titled and inscribed "A.P." in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Illustrated: Allan L. Edmunds, ed. and Halima Taha. Three Decades of American Printmaking: The Brandywine Workshop Collection, checklist of the collection.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Ed clark (1926 - 2019)
Spatial Image III .
Dry pigment on wove paper, 1982. 1346x1651 mm; 53x65 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired from G. R. N'Namdi Gallery, Detroit, MI; private collection, Michigan.
Exhibited: Ed Clark: Recent Work, Randall Galleries, Ltd., New York, May 12 - June 5, 1982.
Illustrated: June Kelly, Ed Clark: Recent Work, Randall Galleries, Ltd., New York, front cover.
Ed Clark's pigment on paper artworks lies between intention and accident. Spatial Image III is an excellent example of his works on paper, and a significant work in his development of the dry pigment technique, inspired by Pueblo sand paintings of the American Southwest. After working in Taos, New Mexico, Clark created a new group of large-scale painting in acrylic and works on paper composed of brown, blue, red, and orange pigment during a three month stay in Paris. He reinterpreted the oval forms that preoccupied him in the 1960s, reinterpreting the curved shapes as glowing clouds of atmospheric color.
In June Kelly's Randall Galleries catalogue essay, Clark describes this experimental approach: "With my hands forcing the colors, it is no longer the classic pastel technique. It is more akin to the sand painting of the Navajo and Pueblo Indians. The possibility of changing the image is immediate and the opportunity for spontaneity is greatly enhanced. For me it has been a personal breakthrough in the abstract experience."
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 exhibited 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 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.
Estimate
$100,000 – $150,000
James denmark (1936 - )
Untitled (Seated Nude).
Brush and ink on wove paper, circa 1980. 610x470 mm; 24x18½ inches. Signed in ink, upper right
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
James denmark (1936 - )
Untitled (Seated Woman with Cap) .
Mixed media on paper, circa 1980s. 719x433 mm; 23⅝x17⅞ inches. Signed in ink, lower right.
Provenance: acquired from Just Looking Gallery, Hagerstown, Maryland; private collection, New Orleans (2002).
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Ernest crichlow (1914 - 2005)
Untitled (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother) .
Acrylic on cream wove paper, circa 1980s. 508x381 mm; 20x15 inches.
Provenance: purchased directly from the artist; private collection, New York.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Eldzier cortor (1916 - 2015)
Dance Composition, No. 34 .
Etching, aquatint, and flat bite from two plates printed in brown and black on cream wove paper, circa 1980-89. 444x355 mm; 17½x14 inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 1/35 in pencil, lower margin.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Still Life with Nectarines .
Oil on linen canvas, 1982. 610x406 mm; 20x16 inches. Signed in oil, lower left.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection.
Exhibited: Hughie Lee-Smith: Retrospective, organized by the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME, July 1 - August 13, 1997; Pensacola Museum of Art, FL, October 2 - 28, 1997; the Appleton Museum of Art, Ocala, FL, January 13 - March 22, 1998; Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, with the label verso.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Two Women .
Color screenprint, 1981-82. 585x363 mm; 23x14¼ inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 27/120 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by NYIT Print Workshop, New York, with the blind stamp lower right. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#62.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Jamming at the Savoy .
Color etching and aquatint on wove paper, 1981-82. 418x599 mm; 16½x23 3/8 inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 160/180 in pencil, lower margin. Published by June Kelly Gallery, New York, with the blind stamp lower right. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#95.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
Charles sebree (1914 - 1985)
Harlequin .
Gouache and beeswax with pigment on paper, 1982. 254x196 mm; 10x7¾ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower left.
Provenance: Mr. Louis Allan Ford, Washington, DC.
Charles Sebree is known for his enigmatic paintings of romantic, harlequin-like figures inspired by theater and the art of Rouault and Picasso. Born in Madisonville, Kentucky, Sebree emerged as a young member of the Chicago art scene in the 1930s. With his Englewood High School classmates Margaret Burroughs, Eldzier Cortor and Charles White, he studied under George Neal as a member of the Arts Crafts Guild. Sebree worked for the Illinois Federal Art Project in the WPA easel painting division from 1936-38. He also taught at the Southside Community Art Center with Burroughs, Cortor and White.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Earlie hudnall, jr. (1946 - )
Street Champion, 4th Ward, Houston, TX .
Silver print, 1986. 406x508 mm; 16x20 inches. Edition of 25. Signed, titled and dated in ink, verso.
Additional prints of this photograph are in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Exhibited: African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, The Civil Rights Movement, and Beyond, Smithsonian American Art Museum, curated by Richard J. Powell and Virginia M. Mecklenburg, April 27 - September 3, 2012, then traveled to Muscarelle Museum of Art, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, The Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando Florida, National Academy Museum, New York, Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanhooga, Tennessee and the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California.
Illustrated: Mecklenburg, Virginia and Powell, Richard J., African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, The Civil Rights Movement, and Beyond, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2012, p. 126.
Street Champion uses composition and contrast to capture the duality of life in the 4th Ward. Amongst the crumbling infrastructure of shotgun houses, children are at play unknowingly of the difficulties life has dealt them. The child on the left is armed with boxing gloves to counter-attack whatever obstacles may come his way.
Born 1946 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Earlie Hudnall, Jr. photographed African American life in the Third, Fourth and Fifth Wards of Houston, Texas. After serving as a Marine in the Vietnam War from 1966-68, he moved to Houston to study art at Texas Southern University in 1968, where he met John Biggers, who became his mentor. While at Texas Southern, Hudnall was hired by Dr. Thomas Freeman, professor of philosophy who tasked him to photograph the communities impacted by President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty. Hudnall continued to photograph children and the elderly of those communities as a means to document urban life in the greater Houston area.
Hudnall is the university photographer for Texas Southern University and is also on the executive boards of the Houston Center for Photography and the Texas Photographic Society. His artworks are in the collections of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Emma amos (1937 - 2020)
Highstep .
Mixed media, including watercolor, pastel, ink, and collage with stencil on wove paper, circa 1983. 1244x952 mm; 49x37½ inches. Signed in acrylic, lower left.
Provenance: acquired from G. R. N'Namdi Gallery, Detroit; private collection, Michigan.
Beginning in 1983, Emma Amos diverted from traditional stretched canvas and started using mixed media and collage on both handwoven and printed fabric and paper. Her 1980s works explore African American figures in motion, from her 1983 depictions of dancers to athletes to her 1986 Falling Series , which define the Black experience in America. Highstep shares its use of silhouette in depicting moving figures with Amos's works on canvas Out in Front, 1982, and Streaks, 1983, both included in the artist's recent retrospective Emma Amos: Color Odyseey . Harris pp. 113 and 116.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
Alvin d. loving, jr. (1935 - 2005)
Untitled .
Assemblage of acrylic on wove paper, 1983. 738x915 mm; 29⅜x43⅜ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower center.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, New York (1983).
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Sam middleton (1927 - 2015)
Menuet .
Gouache, crayon, ink and collage of various printed papers on wove paper, 1984. 527x762 mm; 20½x30 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right recto. Titled in pencil, lower right verso.
Provenance: private collection, Netherlands.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Charles mcgee (1924 - 2021)
Noah’s Ark #10 .
Mixed media and collage on masonite, 1984. 1219x1219 mm; 48x48 inches. Initialed, titled and dated in ink, verso. From the Noah’s Ark series.
Provenance: acquired from G. R. N’Namdi Gallery, Detroit, MI; private collection, Michigan.
Noah’s Ark is a series of painted collages that express nature, joy and optimism. The androgynous flat black figures and disembodied abstract shapes, suspended in a flat plane, vibrate with rhytmic energy. They form repetitious biomorphic patterns that fill many of the spaces, emphasizing the flatness while invigorating the composition. A hybrid of painting, collaged fabric, and still-life objects, these works express McGee’s belief in the, “interconnectedness of all things”.
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. He exhibited in the landmark exhibit The Negro in American Art , UCLA Art Galleries, Los Angeles in 1966. He then curated Seven Black Artists at the Detroit Artists Market in 1969, which included himself, Lester Johnson, Henri Umbaji King, Robert Murray, James Lee, Allie McGhee, Harold Neal, and Robert J. Stull. This immediately led him to open the artists’ collective Gallery 7 and the Charles McGee School of Art, which became a fixture in the Detroit art world. From this early academic beginning, McGee’s work evolved into the large, vibrant and multi-media 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. Myers pp. 6-7.
Estimate
$20,000 – $30,000
James little (1952 - )
Study for Tubman Series #1 for Painting #1 .
Oil on mylar, 1986. 432x432 mm; 17x17 inches (diamond). Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "Oil on Mylar" in ink, on the frame's back. From the Tubman Series.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection (1986).
One of James Little's early series of abstraction inspired by historical African American figures, the Tubman Series of 24x24 inch oil on mylar paintings was exhibited at June Kelly Gallery, New York, June 11 - July 1, 1988. Little was recently announced as a participating artist in the 2022 Whitney Biennial at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Richard hunt (1935 - )
Take Off .
Cast and welded bronze with a gold patina, 1986. Approximately 305x152x102 mm; 12x6x4 inches. A unique cast, confirmed by the artist. Incised signature and date, lower edge of the base.
Provenance: Peg Alston Gallery, New York; acquired from Anderson Fine Arts, Jersey City, NJ; private collection (1990).
This striking vertical form is unique and an excellent example of Richard Hunt's experimental abstract work in bronze from the mid-1980s.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
Jacob lawrence (1917 - 2000)
General Toussaint L’Ouverture .
Color screenprint on Bainbridge Two Ply Rag paper, 1986. 721x470 mm; 28⅜x18½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 38/100 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Lou Stovall, the Workshop, Inc., Washington DC, with the blindstamp lower left. Published by the Amistad Research Center, New Orleans, and Spradling Ames, Key West, Florida.
General Toussaint L'Ouverture is based on the 20th image from Lawrence's original series of 41 paintings from 1938. Nesbett L86-2.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
Jacob lawrence (1917 - 2000)
The Capture.
Color screenprint on Bainbridge Two Ply Rag paper, 1987. 816x559 mm; 32⅛x22 inches, full margins. Artist’s proof, aside from the edition of 18. Signed, titled, dated, inscribed “AP” and numbered 15/30 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Lou Stovall, Workshop, Inc., Washington, DC, with the blind stamp lower left. Based on the image from The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture series. Nesbett L87-2.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Jacob lawrence (1917 - 2000)
The Coachman .
Color screenprint on Bainbridge Two Ply Rag Paper, 1990. 717x467 mm; 28¼x18⅜ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 49/99 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by the Stovall Printmaking Workshop, Inc., Washington DC, with the blind stamp lower left. Published by the Amistad Research Center, New Orleans, and Spradling-Ames, Florida. Based on the eighth image from the series The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture . Nesbett L90-4.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Jacob lawrence (1917 - 2000)
Contemplation .
Color screenprint on Bainbridge Two Ply Rag paper, 1993. 724x470 mm; 28½x18½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 57/120 in pencil, lower margin. Published by the Amistad Research Center, New Orleans, LA, with the blind stamp lower left. Based on The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture series. Nesbett L93-2.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Bondage .
Oil on linen canvas, 1987. 609x457 mm; 24x18 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. Initialed and dated in ink, upper right verso.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection.
Bondage is related to Lee-Smith's 1986 painting Prelude, which depicts the same classical statue of a male torso.
Estimate
$20,000 – $30,000
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Promise .
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 1989. 590x432 mm; 23¼x17 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered X/XXV in pencil, lower margin. Printed by J.K. Fine Arts, New York, with the blind stamp, lower left.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
John rozelle (1944 - )
ROHO Series #119 .
Mixed media on paper, 1987. 685x482 mm; 27x19 inches. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, lower margin.
Provenance: acquired from Bill Hodges Gallery, NY; private collection, NY.
John Rozelle has explained his artistic approach, “I try to find spiritual connections in object-making. African sensibilities are used in the presentation of contemporary social/political concerns, much like objects in use in African societies where traditional practices exist today”.
Rozelle is a collagist, painter, sculptor, and educator from St. Louis, Missouri, currently living in Catalonia, Spain. He holds a BFA with a major in painting and a minor in sculpture from Washington University and an MFA from Fontbonne University, Saint Louis. Rozelle is currently a tenured associate professor in the Drawing and Painting Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work is in the permanent collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Margaret Harwell Museum, Spertus Museum of Jewish Studies, The Studio Museum in Harlem and the California African-American Museum.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Jack whitten (1939 - 2018)
Site X .
Acrylic with collage on canvas, mounted on masonite, 1987. 229x356 mm; 9½x14 inches. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "9½x14" in pencil twice on the verso, on the canvas and the upper stretcher bar.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection.
Site X is from Jack Whitten's late 1980s Site series of densely constructed urban abstractions. This work shows the artist's growing incorporation of casting objects in acrylic and the introduction of collage into his mosaic-like compositions.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
David c. driskell (1931 - 2020)
The Land is Blue (Rainforest) .
Offset color lithograph on wove paper, 1986. 558x702 mm; 22x29<7/8> inches. Artist’s proof, from an unknown edition. Signed, titled, dated “1988”, and inscribed “AP” in pencil, lower margin. Printed at the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
David C. Driskell originated this aesthetic of layering quasi-figurative and abstract vertical stripes while creating collages in the 1980s. Earlier lithographs such as Ancestral Images, 1986 and Ancient Totems, 1986 are reminiscent of the style. Childs p. 115.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Sir Frank Bowling, OBE RA (1934 - )
Untitled .
Acrylic, oil and acrylic gel on paper, mounted on cotton canvas, 1988. Approximately 292x210 mm; 11½x8¼ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right on the canvas support.
Provenance: acquired from Anderson Fine Arts, Jersey City, NJ; private collection (1990).
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
Sir Frank Bowling, OBE RA (1934 - )
Untitled .
Acrylic, oil and acrylic gel on paper, mounted on cotton canvas, 1988. Approximately 241x267 mm; 9½x10½ inches.
Provenance: acquired from Anderson Fine Arts, Jersey City, NJ; private collection (1990).
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Brandywine Workshop
Stanley whitney (1946 - )
Untitled #1 .
Color screenprint on cream wove paper, 1979. 584x905 mm; 23x35⅜ inches. State proof, one of only several state proofs with unique coloring, aside from the edition of 35. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, lower edge. Printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Provenance: the collection of Anne & Allan Edmunds.
Consigned to support the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia and its legacy endowment campaign.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Richard hunt (1935 - )
Untitled
Color screenprint on handmade paper, circa 1980. 558x774 mm; 22x30½ inches. State proof, one of only several state proofs with unique coloring, aside from the edition of 40. Signed and inscribed “State Proof” in pencil, lower edge. Printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia, with the printer’s blind stamp.
Provenance: the collection of Anne & Allan Edmunds.
Consigned to support the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia and its legacy endowment campaign.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Jacob lawrence (1917 - 2000)
Builders Three .
Color lithograph, 1991. 762x552 mm; 30x21¾ inches, full margins. Artist's proof, aside from an edition of 90. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "AP" in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia. Nesbett 91-1.
Provenance: collection of Anne & Allan Edmunds.
Illustrated: Allan L. Edmunds, ed. and Halima Taha. Three Decades of American Printmaking: The Brandywine Workshop Collection, pl. 154, p. 120.
Consigned to support the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia and its legacy endowment campaign.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
John biggers (1924 - 2001)
Family Ark (Middle Panel) .
Color offset lithograph on cream wove paper, 1997. 749x546 mm; 29½x21½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 10/60 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Provenance: the collection of Anne & Allan Edmunds.
Illustrated: Allan L. Edmunds, ed. and Halima Taha. Three Decades of American Printmaking: The Brandywine Workshop Collection, pl. 150, p. 117.
This print is the center panel of the triptych - another impression is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Consigned to support the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia and its legacy endowment campaign.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Emma amos (1938 - 2020)
Miss Otis .
Silk aquatint with textile chine-collé on Arches paper, 2002. 622x528 mm; 24½x20⅞ inches, full margins. Printer's proof, aside from an edition of 25. Signed and inscribed "Printer's Proof" in pencil, lower margin. Printed at the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Provenance: Anne and Allan Edmunds Collection.
Illustrated: Allan L. Edmunds, ed. and Halima Taha. Three Decades of American Printmaking: The Brandywine Workshop Collection, pl. 153 p. 119.
Additional impressions are in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art.
The subject of Amos’s print refers to the 1934 Cole Porter song Miss Otis Regrets, which recounts the story of a young woman who, after being seduced and then spurned, tracks down and shoots her former lover in a rage. Following her arrest, she is taken from jail by a mob and lynched. The narrator conveys the final, polite apology of the once proper Miss Otis to her friends: “Miss Otis regrets she’s unable to lunch today.”
Consigned to support the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia and its legacy endowment campaign.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Belkis ayón (1967 - 1999)
Acoso (Harrassment) .
Collograph on cream wove paper, 1998. 736 mm; 29 inches diameter (tondo), full margins. Artist's proof, aside from an edition of 10. Signed, titled, dated 1999, numbered 2/3 and inscribed "Por Allan, gracias para tu (?) y ayuda (For Allan, thank you for your and help)" in pencil, lower margin. Printed by the artist at the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Provenance: collection of Anne & Allan Edmunds.
Exhibited: I Always Return. Collographies of Belkis Ayón, VII Biennial of Havana, Habana Gallery, Havana, Cuba, November 15 - December 18, 2000.
Consigned to support the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia and its legacy endowment campaign.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
John t. scott (1940 - 2007)
Maryann
Hand-pressed woodcut, 2002. 2006x1219 mm; 79x48 inches, full margins. Edition of 4.
Provenance: the John T. Scott Artist Trust.
Depicted as an indomitable matriarch, Maryann Armstrong is the mother of trumpet virtuoso Louis Armstrong. She gave birth to him in 1901 in Battlefield, New Orleans. After the birth of her daughter, Beatrice, and the absence of her husband, she suffered poor health. Needing to work, she had Louis and his sister move in with their grandmother for the next five years. After fifth grade, Louis began picking up odd jobs to help support his mother and younger sister. Throughout his young life, Maryann was an ardent supporter of his musical talent.
Educator, sculptor and printmaker John T. Scott was born in Gentilly, Louisiana in 1940, and raised in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. His father worked as a restaurant cook and chauffeur while his mother stayed home. He learned embroidery from her that served as his first foray into the visual arts. Having a Catholic New Orleans upbringing, Scott attended the Xavier University in New Orleans receiving a BA degree. He received his MFA degree from Michigan State University in East Lansing in 1965, where he studied under painter Charles Pollock. Afterward, Scott returned to Xavier where he taught for 40 years. In 1983, Scott received a grant to study under sculptor George Rickey, and in 1992, he was awarded the MacArthur Grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Scott received an honorary Doctor of Humanities from Michigan State University in 1995 and a Doctor of Humanities from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1997. His works are in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Edmunds p. 5; Stedman p. 17.
Consigned to support the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia and its legacy endowment campaign.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
John woodrow wilson (1922 - 2015)
Five Men .
Offset lithograph on wove paper, 2004. 368x622 mm; 14½x24½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 14/56 in pencil, lower margin. Published by Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Provenance: collection of Anne & Allan Edmunds.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Reflecting upon his social and racial justice based practice, Wilson depicts five anonymous men that seem to have witnessed something unimaginable just outside the viewer’s range. The central figures are wide-eyed and in motion while the other men look upon the viewer.
Consigned to support the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia and its legacy endowment campaign.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Portfolio
Forty Square Portfolio .
Portfolio with four color lithographs on Revere suede paper, 2012. Each 533x381 mm; 21x15 inches. An edition of 40. Each printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Each signed and numbered in pencil, lower margin. Another portfolio is in the permanent collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.
Provenance: collection of Anne & Allan Edmunds.
The black leather portfolio includes four color lithographic prints that were published to support the fortieth anniversary of the Brandywine Workshop. With the original hard vinyl-covered portfolio including an additional four text panels and colophon sheet.
*CAMILLE BILLOPS (1933 - 2019). Kaohsiung Series #9 . Signed, titled, dated 1982, printed in 2012 and numbered 7/40 in pencil, lower margin * BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD (1939 - ). Le Lit (three panels) . Signed, titled, dated and numbered 7/74 in pencil, lower margins, center panel * HOWARDENA PINDELL (1943 - ). Pindell-DNA . Signed, titled, dated and numbered 7/80 in pencil, lower margin * KEITH MORRISON (1942 - ). The Tango . Signed, titled, dated and numbered 7/180 in pencil, lower margin.
Consigned to support the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia and its legacy endowment campaign.
Estimate
$12,000 – $18,000
Contemporary Part II
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; 19⅝x14⅜ inches, full margins, bound as issued.
One of 400 signed and numbered sets. Signed and numbered 198 in pencil on the colophon. Printed by George Drexel, Osiris Screen Printing, New York. Published by the Limited Editions Club, New York.
In the original black linen-covered clamshell box. Nesbett L90-2.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Akili ron anderson (1946 - )
Middle Passage .
Color pencil, ink and metallic paint on paper, 1986-89. 450x609 mm; 17¾x24 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: Mr. Louis Allan Ford, Washington, DC.
Middle Passage reflects the influence of African textile design in Akili Ron Anderson's practice. His artwork pays tribute to the African American community by using patterns, symbols, and culturally specific references. Inspired by the writings of Alain Locke and like the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Anderson believes that the art of African Americans should document their heritage and contemporary life in uplifting ways. It is meant to be a celebration of African culture and a source of inspiration for African Americans. Also, Anderson is a member of AfriCOBRA which is reflected in his practice. He has continuously strived to make the dissemination of art accessible to this community by designing reliefs, stained glass, murals, and installations for religious, cultural, and public institutions.
Anderson studied at the Corcoran School of Art, 1964-65, and earned both a BFA and MFA from Howard University in 1969 and 2008, respectively. Recent solo exhibitions include Hampton University Museum, July 9 - November 18, 2016. His work has been exhibited in It Takes a Nation: Art for Social Justice, American University Museum, Washington, DC with Emory Douglas, and The Black Panther Party, AFRICOBRA, and Contemporary Washington Artists, curated by Sandy Bellamy, September 6 - October 23, 2016. He has been an associate professor in the Department of Art at Howard University since 2019.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Artis lane (1927 - )
Untitled (Nude and Cat) .
Acrylic and graphite on wove paper, circa 1990. 660x508 mm; 26x20 inches. Signed in ink, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Richard yarde (1939 - 2011)
Malcolm .
Watercolor on cream wove paper, circa 1990. 737x914 mm; 19½x14½ inches. Signed in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
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
Herbert gentry (1919 - 2003)
Near to You .
Color lithograph on wove paper, 1989. 431x304 mm; 17x12 inches, full margins. Artist's proof. Signed, titled and inscribed "AP 7/15" in pencil, lower margin.
Provenance: private collection, the Netherlands; private collection, New Orleans.
Exhibited: Tribute To A Friendship: Romare Bearden and Hebert Gentry, Alitash Kebede Fine Arts, Los Angeles, 2004, with the gallery label on frame back.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Freddie styles (1944 - )
Untitled (Root Series) .
Acrylic on cotton canvas, circa 1990. 884x1499mm; 37⅞x59⅞ inches. Signed in acrylic, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Georgia.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
Merton d. simpson (1928 - 2013)
Singer .
Oil on Mali hunting cloth and canvas, 1991. 508x406 mm; 20x16 inches. Initialed in oil lower right, recto. Signed, titled and dated in ink, verso.
Provenance: acquired from Bill Hodges Gallery, NY, private collection, NY.
Exhibited: Ancestral Improvisation, Galerie Noir d'Ivoire, Paris, March 27 - April 11, 1992, then traveled to: Tambaran Gallery, New York, September 18 - October 15, 1993; Merton D. Simpson: The Journey of an Artist, Gibbes Museum of Art, South Carolina, September 8 - November 12, 1995, with gallery label on the frame back.
Illustrated: Merton D. Simpson: Ancestral Improvisation, essay by Allan Stone, Galerie Noir d'Ivoire, Paris, p. 5; Merton D. Simpson: The Journey of an Artist, Gibbes Museum of Art, listed in exhibition checklist.
Singer, along with thirty other works in the Ancestral Improvisation series, are Simpson's search for "self-knowledge" and "psychological portraits." Inspired by jazz, a primordial ancestry and Cubism, his use of cloth and oil to create abstract portraits allowed him to explore memory in a subtle and modern manner. Stone p. 2.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Joe overstreet (1933 - 2019)
Untitled .
Oil pastels and string collage on wove paper, 1990. 762x559 mm; 30x22 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: acquired from G. R. N’Namdi Gallery, Birmingham, MI, with the label on the frame back; private collection.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Frank w. wimberley (1926 - )
Berbere .
Collage and acrylic on heavy wove paper, 1992. 558x571 mm; 22x22⅛ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right. Signed, titled, and dated in ink, verso.
Provenance: acquired from Bill Hodges Gallery, NY, private collection, NY.
Born in Pleasantville, NJ, Frank W. Wimberley has produced a significant body of work in abstraction with paint and collage. Wimberley studied art with James A. Porter, Loïs Mailou Jones, and James Lesesne 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. The artist expressed that his use of found papers, objects and torn paper was influenced by the physical qualities of collage Pablo Picasso and Antoni Tàpies utilized in their works of the late 1960s and 70s. The artist has infused the formal qualities of abstraction with tension from the torn edges of the paper and cardboard.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Melvin edwards (1937 - )
August Water #4 .
Acrylic spray paint, Chinese ink & enamel on wove paper, 1992. 432x356 mm; 17x14 inches. Initialed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: acquired from G. R. N’Namdi Gallery, Birmingham, MI, with the label on the frame back; private collection.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Mildred thompson (1935 - 2003)
Particles (Helio Centric Series)..
Itaglio vitreograph, 1993. 749x609 mm; 29½x24 inches, full margins. Signed, dated, numbered 3/20 and inscribed "Littleton Studios, Spruce Pine, NC" in pencil, lower margin. Printed at Littleton Studios, Spruce Pine, NC.
Mildred Thompson had a lifelong fascination with scientific phenomena, studying space, mathematics and physics, much like her fellow Washington, DC artist, Alma Thomas. These interests are reflected particularly in her prints of the Helio Centric Series .
Thompson began formal artistic training at Howard University in 1953, studying under James A. Porter--artist, instructor of painting and drawing, chairman of the art department and director of the Howard University Gallery of Art. Professor Porter published Modern Negro Art in 1943, the first comprehensive study in the United States of African American art. After graduation, Porter continued to advise Thompson and suggested she study in Germany.
Thompson developed her innovative forms of abstraction in printmaking and wood construction while living between Cologne and Aachen. In 1973, Thompson had a one-person exhibition at the Neue Galerie in Aachen. Thompson's prints from this period were recently exhibited in Mildred Thompson Resonance, Selected Works from the 1990s at the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, June 23 – October 2, 2016.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Playmates .
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 1992. 400x349 mm; 15¾x13¾ inches, full margins. Signed, dated and numbered 15/99 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by J. K. Fine Art Editions Co. Published by the Limited Editions Club, New York. From For My People, a set of 6 lithographs illustrating poems by Margaret Walker.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
For My People .
Color lithograph on Arches paper, 1992. 400x349 mm; 15¾x13¾ inches, full margins. Signed, dated and numbered 15/99 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by J. K. Fine Art Editions Co. Published by the Limited Editions Club, New York. From For My People, a set of 6 lithographs illustrating poems by Margaret Walker.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Homage to the Panthers.
Color lithograph, 1993. 864x521 mm; 34x20½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 79/90 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Joseph Kleineman, New York. Published by the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, Oakland.
With this color lithograph, Elizabeth Catlett reinterprets her same-titled 1970 linoleum cut. It was commissioned by David Hilliard and Frederika Newton to raise funds for their founding of the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation in 1993.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Melvin w. clark (1944 - )
Saxophone Colossus .
Reduction color woodcut on heavy wove paper, 1993. 648x457 mm; 25½x18 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 28/30 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by the artist at the Lower East Side Print Shop, New York.
Jazz is an important motif for contemporary painter and printmaker Melvin Clark. This impressive woodcut is inspired by saxophone giant Sonny Rollins and bears the same name as his famous 1956 Prestige album. In 1986, Clark received a fellowship to do his first woodcuts at Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop in New York, and soon moved to New York from Detroit. Clark describes the impact of jazz in New York City upon his art: "I was able to see live, all the living legends of Jazz... I often use musical themes in my art. The energy of live musical performances is what I strive to capture in my compositions." Clark executed two large-scale public murals in the New York area, including the 1996 mosaic tile mural Enchanted Dreams and Sunbird at P.S. 152 in Brooklyn, and New Spirit Ensemble, a major mosaic mural at an entrance to Newark Penn Station, completed in 1998. His work is found today in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Modern African Arts Gallery, Amsterdam, the Printmaking Workshop, New York, the Lower East Side Printshop, New York, the Detroit Board of Education, and the Pehl Collection, Eldersburg, MD.
Estimate
$1,200 – $1,800
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Untitled (Abstract Colored Mask I) .
Watercolor and pencil on wove paper, 1993-94. 171x254 mm; 6⅜x10 inches. Signed in ink, lower right.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection.
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Untitled (Abstract Colored Mask II) .
Watercolor and pencil on wove paper, 1993-94. 171x254 mm; 6⅜x10 inches. Signed in ink, lower right.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection.
Estimate
$7,000 – $10,000
Samella lewis (1924 - )
The Masquerade .
Color screenprint, 1994. 603x508 mm; 23¾x20 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 21/40 in pencil, lower margin.
This print is based on the 1994 work on paper in the collection of the Williamson Gallery, Scripps College. McNaughton/Muchnic 16.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Kerry james marshall (1955 - )
Brownie .
Color lithograph, 1995. 503x381mm; 19¾x15 inches. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 29/50 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
$25,000 – $35,000
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Untitled (VOICES: An Artists’ Project).
Mixed media on Buckeye Ltd. paper, 1994. 279x356 mm; 11x14 inches. Signed, dated and numbered 82/100 in pencil, lower edge. Published by The National Conference of Artists, Michigan Chapter, Detroit.
This unique work on paper is one of Sam Gilliam's contributions to VOICES , an artist's book created by 23 nationally known African American artists. It is from one of a limited edition of 100 books - each containing original works of art. Sam Gilliam managed to translate his non-objective, sculptural canvas paintings into a series of screenprints that were printed and stitched together.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Stack .
Color screenprint and monoprint with collage on hand-sewn rag paper, 1994. Approximately 863x732 mm; 34x28⅞ inches, irregular sheet. Edition of 20. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, lower edge.
Printed and published by Lois Berghoff and Dorothy Cowden of Berghoff-Cowden Editions, Florida, with printers, blindstamp lower left.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Adamo 19 .
Color screenprint and monoprint with collage on hand-sewn rag paper, 1995. Approximately 967x732 mm; 38⅛x28⅞ inches, irregular sheet. Edition of 20. Signed, titled and dated in ink, lower center. Inscribed "series D #19" in pencil, lower left verso.
Printed and published by Lois Berghoff and Dorothy Cowden of Berghoff-Cowden Editions, Florida, with the printer's blindstamp, lower left corner.
In Adamo 19, Gilliam's tapestry of layered colors creates patterns, depth, and references to quilts.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Shooting Star V .
Assemblage of acrylic, collage, screenprint and aluminum, in a shadow box frame, 1998. 317x558x50 mm; 12½x22x2 inches (overall). Signed and dated in ink, lower edge. Produced in collaboration with Lou Stovall’s Workshop, Inc., Washington, DC.
Provenance: private collection, Virginia.
Another work from this series is in the permanent collection of the Yale University Art Gallery.
Estimate
$12,000 – $18,000
A Distinguished Private Collection
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Harriet .
Linoleum cut on cream wove paper, 1975. 311x254 mm; 12¼x10 inches, full margins. Second edition of 2. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 12/20 in pencil, lower margin. Printed at Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, New York, in 1990.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
There is a Woman in Every Color .
Color linoleum cut, screenprint and woodcut on Arches paper, 1975. 475x660 mm; 18¾x26 inches, full margins. Second edition (of 3), printed in 2002. Signed, titled, dated, inscribed "E/E" and numbered 9/22 in pencil, lower margin.
Additional impressions are in the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Maine.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Romare bearden (1911 - 1988)
Girl in the Garden .
Color lithograph, 1979. 560x408 mm; 22⅛x16⅛ inches, full margins. Artist’s proof, aside from the edition of 150. Signed, titled and inscribed “AP” and numbered 6/15 in pencil, lower margin. Gelburd/Rosenberg GG#88.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Dancing .
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 1990. 451x610 mm; 17¾x24 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated, inscribed “Stevie Wonder, The Wonder Foundation” and numbered 38/110 in pencil, with the inked fingerprint, lower margin. Commissioned by the Stevie Wonder Foundation.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Willie birch (1942 - )
Woman with Do Rag .
Papier-mâché and mixed media, 1990. Approximately 508x394x305 mm; 20x15½x12 inches. Signed in ink, lower right verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, Virginia (1994).
This charming bust by New Orleans-native sculptor, painter and muralist Willie Birch is a wonderful example of his celebrating popular forms of African American culture. Birch first began using papier-mâché in the mid-80s and created a series of figurative sculptures that combine Birch's fine arts background with a newfound interest in folk art. A similar pair of 1991 papier-mâché busts, The Couple is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. These sculptures are in many other institutional collections including the New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art and Speed Museum of Art.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Carrie mae weems (1953 - )
Jim, if you choose to accept, the mission is to land on your own two feet.
Silver print, 1988-89. 508x406 mm; 20x16 inches. Signed, dated and numbered 50/50 in pencil, verso. From the Kitchen Table Series.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
María magdalena campos-pons (1959 - )
Untitled .
Color photo lithograph and pulp painting on handmade paper, 1999. 508x457 mm; 20x18 inches. Signed, dated and numbered 5/14 in pencil, lower edge. Printed with Gail Deety and Randy Hemminghaus at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Print and Paper, Rutgers University, with the printer's blindstamp, lower left. From the series Sagrada Familia (Holy Family), 2000.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Untitled and its overarching series, Holy Family is Campos-Pons' exploration of dichotomies - black/white, Cuba/America, Africa/Europe - and the hybridity of their outcomes.
María Magdalena Campos-Pons is an Afro-Cuban artist who works primarily in photography, performance, audiovisual media, and sculpture. Her practice is rooted in Cuban culture, gender, sexuality, religion and spirituality. She trained at the Escuela National de Arte in Havana between 1976 and 1979, and from 1980 to 1989, attended Havana's Instituto Superior de Arte. She has participated in the Dakar Biennale, the Johannesburg Biennial, the Guangzhou Triennial, the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, Prospect. 4 Triennial, and the Havana Biennial. Her works are held in many museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Perez Art Museum Miami and the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Betye saar (1926 - )
Now You Cookin’ With Gas .
Color screenprint, 2000. 381x279 mm; 15x11 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 64/75 in pencil, lower margin. Published by the Limited Editions Club, New York. From Bookmarks in the Pages of Life, a set of 6 color screenprints illustrating stories by Zora Neale Hurston.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Betye saar (1926 - )
Magnolia Flower .
Color screenprint, 2000. 381x279 mm; 15x11 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 64/75 in pencil, lower margin. Published by the Limited Editions Club, New York. From Bookmarks in the Pages of Life, a set of 6 color screenprints illustrating stories by Zora Neale Hurston.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Margaret burroughs (1917 - 2010)
Person (Two Worlds) .
Linoleum cut on cream wove paper, 2002. 463x365 mm; 18¼x14½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 3/5 in ink, lower margin.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Willie cole (1955 - )
Men of Iron .
Digital print with ultra-chrome archival inks on Epson 9600, 2004. 520x698 mm; 20½x27½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 2/30 in pencil, lower margin. Printed at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Print and Paper, Rutgers University. Published by Alexander and Bonin, New York.
On the cusp of his fiftieth birthday, Willie Cole used his body for a duo of 2004 prints; Silex Male. Ritual and Sunbeam Male. Ceremonial. A third print, Men of Iron, united and compacted the paired figures of the previous two.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Kara walker (1969 - )
An Army Train .
Offset lithograph and screenprint on Somerset Textured wove paper, 2005. 610x890 mm; 24x35 inches, full margins. One of two printer's proofs, aside from the editon of 35. Signed, dated, inscribed "PP" and numbered 2/2 in pencil, lower right. Printed and published by the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, Columbia University. From the portfolio of 15 prints Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated).
According to the Neiman Center, each of these 15 prints began with an enlargement, using offset lithography, of a woodcut plate from Ed. Alfred H. Guernsey and Henry M. Alden's Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War, which was first published in Chicago in 1866. Each of these images was then overlaid with Walker's silhouette figures rendered with solid black silkscreen. This print series marked the first time Walker united her trademark silhouettes with the kind of historical documentation that influenced her aesthetics.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
BARBARA BULLOCK (1938 - )
The Houses of Molu (The Journey series).
Collage, flashe paint, acrylic, and gold leaf on watercolor paper, 2002. 1184x876 mm; 46½x34½ inches.
Provenance: private collection, Virginia.
Additional works from The Journey series are in the permanent collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
As an Africanist, Barabara Bullock invokes ancestral spirits by constructing assemblages that question identity, belief, gender, and the artistic process. Her work is informed by myths, literature, and symbols from Africa and the African diaspora; her African studies inspire collages composed of a silhouetted cacophony of shapes.
Born and raised in North Philadelphia and Germantown, PA, Bullock trained at the Fleisher Art Memorial from 1956-59, the Hussian School of Art from 1963-66, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. As an educator, advisor, and artist, Bullock has led classes at museums, schools, and prisons, including the New Jersey Council-funded Arts Horizon. She has executed commissions for the Philadelphia International Airport, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, SEPTA, and the Village of Arts and Humanities. Bullock has been recognized as a Distinguished Teaching Artist by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 1997 and 2001, received a 1997 Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Visual Arts Residency Grant, and a Leeway Foundation Bessie Berman Grant. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Lafayette College, Philadelphia International Airport, Jane Voorhees Zimmer Art Museum, Rutgers State University, Leeway Foundation, Philadelphia and the African American Museum in Philadelphia.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
Edward e. hughes (1940 - 2018)
Saturday Afternoon on Magic Island .
Mixed media and wood assemblage, 1992. 863x787x177 mm; 34x31x7 inches. Signed in ink, lower right recto.
Provenance: acquired directly from artist, private collection, Virginia (1995).
Philadelphia native Edward Hughes created three-dimensional mixed-media artworks characterized by geometric shapes, vibrant colors, found objects, and collage elements. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he attained a certificate in painting, then Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a BFA. While traveling through Haiti, he witnessed Voodoo ceremonies and the blend of Christianity and West-African religions; its imagery is prevalent in his use of materials and symbolism.
His art was included in group exhibitions We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s - 1970s, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, September 2015 - January 2016.; and The Chemistry of Color, African-American Artists in Philadelphia, 1970 - 1990, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, January - April 2005. Hughes's works are in the collections of the Portland Art Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; he also has completed public projects in Philadelphia with SEPTA With Art Philadelphia | Art in Transit.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Edward e. hughes (1940 - 2018)
Untitled (Pecking Order) .
Mixed media and wood assemblage, 2005. 914x812x76 mm; 36x32x3 inches. Signed, dated and inscribed "untitled" in ink, verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, Virginia (2010).
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Anthony liggins (1965 - )
Miki’s Winter Wonderland .
Acrylic with yarn, chopsticks and wooden rod on linen canvas, 2007. 1219x2438x89 mm; 48x96x3½ inches. Signed in acrylic, lower right side.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Virginia (2008).
Emitting a broad spectrum of abstract color with paint and yarn in electric hues, Miki’s Winter Wonderland is a stimulating canvas from Miami-based painter Anthony Liggins. His body of work, including Abstract Expressionist paintings, mixed-media work, and sculpture, is influenced by Eastern philosophies such as Japanese Wabi-Sabi and Zen as well as folk music. He creates mixed-media canvases with vivid combinations drenched in intense color.
Liggins studied fashion design and merchandising at Delaware State University and American Intercontinental University in Atlanta and London, and completed an apprenticeship with French couturier Claudine Taubault. After a career in fashion, his creative spirit led him to visual art as he found a way to express himself through painting. His work was exhibited in the Biennale Internazionale Dell ‘Arte Contemporanea in Florence, Italy, 2005.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Anthony liggins (1965 - )
Soul of the Conga .
Acrylic with chopsticks and wooden rod on linen canvas, 2009. 1219x1219 mm; 48x48 inches. Signed, titled and dated in red ink, verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Virginia (2009).
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Prow .
Acrylic on birch plywood panel, 2007. 305x305x51 mm; 12x12x2 inches. Signed, titled and dated in ink, verso.
Provenance: Sande Webster Gallery, Philadelphia, with the gallery label on the verso; private collection (2010).
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
Glenn ligon (1960 - )
Boy on Tire .
Color screenprint on wove paper, 2004. 1054x806 mm; 41¼×31¾ inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 82/108 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Brand X Editions, New York. Published by The Lincoln Center/List Poster and Print Program, New York.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Daniel joseph martinez (1957 - )
A meditation on the possibility…
White Carrara marble, 2005. Approximately 304x127x25 and 254x101x25 mm; 12x5x1 and 10x4x1 inches. Edition of 50.
Provenance: acquired at the William H. Johnson Foundation for the Arts Gala/Auction, Los Angeles, private collection, Virginia (2009).
The artist's full title for this artwork is A meditation on the possibility of romantic love or where are you going with that gun in your hand, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton discuss the relationships between expressionism and social reality present in Hitler's paintings.
Daniel Joseph Martinez’s sculptures depict the Black Panther leaders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Carrara marble, a highly coveted stone symbolizing wealth and heroic statuary. He casts the history of Black revolutionaries into the artistic tradition of monumentality to expose cultural contradictions and increase public awareness.
Throughout his career, Martinez engaged in an interrogation of social, political, and cultural mores by creating artworks spanning the ephemeral to the solid. His practice takes the form of text, sculpture, photography, painting, installation, robotics, performance, and public interventions. Their commonality is they all address topics of race, class, and sociopolitical boundaries present within American society.
Martinez received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1979. His work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions, including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017, Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, 2017, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2017, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2017, Museo de Arte Moderno, Medellín, Colombia, 2016, Jewish Museum, New York, 2016 and Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012. Martinez represented the United States in eleven biennials worldwide, including SITE Santa Fe Biennial, Istanbul Biennial, Berlin Biennial, California Biennial, Quebec Biennial, Venice Biennale and Whitney Biennial in both 1993 and 2008. He also represented the United States in the American Pavilion in the Cairo Biennial, 2006. He has been the recipient of many awards including the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency, Italy, American Academy Fellowship, Berlin, Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, ArtPace Foundation Fellowship and Residency, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Getty Center Foundation Individual Artist Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowships. Martinez cofounded Deep River Gallery and LAXART, both in Los Angeles. He is the Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Art at the University of California, Irvine.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Mequitta ahuja (1976 - )
Bramble .
Oil on cotton canvas, 2009. 1524x1270 mm; 60x50 inches. Signed and dated in ink (twice), lower right verso.
Provenance: private collection, Virginia.
Exhibited: Artist Pension Trust, 28 Liberty Street, New York, 2018.
Bramble is an excellent example of Mequitta Ahuja's innovative approach to self-portraiture, investigating ideas of feminism, historical forms of painting, myth and representation. Bramble was part of Ahuja's submission when she was awarded a 2009 Painters and Sculptors Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. In 2009-10, she was also an artist-in-resident at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Of South Asian and African American descent, Ahuja confronts the viewer and the artworld in her daring Bramble. She portrays herself as a defiant, heroic figure, wielding a sword and rising above a bramble of abstraction. While boldly taking on the world of painting and the historical representation of women, Ahuja makes the narrative her own. The artist's statement solidifies this mission, "I show a woman-of-color articulating her own story and the story of painting. As a female artist of color, I have internalized the expectation that I should mine my personal experiences as case studies in the social conditions of race, class and gender. I both accept and step beyond that expectation. I aim to hold and embody in my worth the politics of identity as well as the function of self-portraiture exemplified by Poussin's 1650 self-portrait: displaying authority within the history and discipline of painting." Ahuja's cross cultural paintings combine diverse art historical sources such as Egyptian forms, Giotto frescoes, Hindu figurations and Mughal miniatures. Turning the narrative of portrait painting on its head, Ahuja's practice also challenges the traditions of Western art. She develops her self-portraits through a process of discovery, developing her character through performance, including costumes, props, and photography before painting.
The artist is the recipient of the 2018 Guggenheim fellowship award. Her paintings have been exhibited internationally, most recently in Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modern Tradition at the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Her work is in many institutional collections including the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She earned a BA degree from Hampshire College in 1998, and an MFA from the University of Illinois. She lives and works in Weston, CT, and Baltimore, MD.
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
Hank willis thomas (1976 - )
Negroes to be Sold .
Laser-cut relief on handmade paper, 2009. 622x431 mm; 24½x17 inches. Signed, dated and numbered 14/30 in pencil, lower margin. Printed at the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Negroes to Be Sold parallels 18th-century slave advertisements, specifically one from Charleston, South Carolina, on April 26, 1760. Thomas uses the familiar silhouettes of Shaquille O’Neal and Michael Jackson to portray enslaved bodies, expressing the duality of past and present as well as enslavement and success. The artist raises questions about the history of slavery, and the continued commodification of Black bodies.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Deborah willis (1948 - )
I Made Space for a Good Man .
Color lithograph, from photo film and drawing on mylar, 2009 381x762 mm; 15x30 inches, wide margins. Signed, dated and numbered 24/28 in pencil, lower edge. Printed at the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Additional impressions are in the permanent collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.
In a 2010 interview with The Huffington Post about the print, Dr. Willis recalled: “I was an undergraduate at Philadelphia College of Art and one of my professors said to me, 'you're taking up a good man's space, you should not be in this program. All you're going to do is get married, get pregnant, have a baby and a good man could have been in your seat.' I'll never forget that moment. I was so humiliated and embarrassed because this was a public event. And of course what happened? When I graduated, I got pregnant. [Laughs] I was embarrassed. I couldn't celebrate the fact that I was having a kid. Recently, my son found a contact sheet with photographs of my pregnant belly and he said, 'mom, you never printed these.' I remembered this story. What I realized in terms of flipping the script, was that I made space for a good man, by having my son, who is a photographer. Flipping that into positive energy and still creating work.” Martha St. Jean, “A Portrait of Deborah Willis,” The Huffington Post, April 6, 2010.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Irozealb (iona rozeal brown) (1966 - )
King Kata #3, Peel Out (after Yoshitoshi’s “Incomparable Warriors: Woman Han Gaku”) .
Archival inkjet on Hahnemuhle German etching paper, 2009. 571x453 mm; 22½x17⅞ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 34/50 in pencil, lower margin.
King Kata #3, Peel Out is a print based on All Falls Down, a series of paintings commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland. She created these paintings based in part on Japanese Ukiyo-e prints from the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, in addition to her experiences in a residency with Cleveland area high school students. She created a narrative that explored how young women get thrown "off course" by the cultural chaos of contemporary society. The narrative that she wove formed an elaborate story filled with fantastical lands, dynamic characters, and engaging plots.
iROZEALb (Iona Rozeal Brown) is best known for her clever merging of the imagery of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, American hip-hop culture, and science fiction. She first became interested in Japanese visual culture after learning about ganguro, a phenomenon popular in Japan during the 1990s in which girls darkened their skin and dyed their hair blond as a challenge to ideals of beauty. Brown earned a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Yale University in 2002. Both a visual artist and DJ, who has lived in Tokyo and Yokohama, Brown currently lives and works in Washington, DC.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Xaviera simmons (1974 - )
Into the New Sea (Nomad) .
Digital C-print, 2009, printed in 2010. 382x508 mm; 15⅜x20 inches. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 6/20 in ink, verso.
Influenced by a two-year walking pilgrimage retracing the Transatlantic slave trade with Buddhist monks, Xaviera Simmons appears as a character in her images, posing in sublime landscapes like a mythical figure. Simmons stands majestically in a calf-high field of wheat, with a red scarf draped over her head. Arms wrapped in front of her, Simmons gazes off into the vast expanse of space. Her work is steeped in the tradition of modern American landscape painting, from early Impressionists to Realism.
Simmons’s practice spans photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture and installation. She investigates identity, abstraction, the cyclical development of landscape and humanity’s interaction with it.
Simmons received a BFA from Bard College in 2004, then completed the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art in 2005 while simultaneously completing a two-year actor-training conservatory with The Maggie Flanigan Studio.
Since 2019, Simmons has been a visiting professor and lecturer as well as the inaugural Solomon Fellow at Harvard University. Her work has been included in exhibitions at ICA Boston, SFMOMA, The Phillips Collection, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Barnes Foundation. She is a recipient of The Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College, 2020, Socrates Sculpture Park’s Artist Award, 2019, Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Award, 2018, as well as Denniston Hills’ Distinguished Performance Artist Award, 2018.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Awol erizku (1988 - )
Boy Holding Grapes .
Digital C-print, 2012. 1003x749 mm; 40x30 inches. Edition of 10 plus two AP.
Boy Holding Grapes is Awol Erizku's clever twist on Caravaggio’s Young Sick Bacchus (Bacchino Malato). Dated between 1593 to 1594, Young Sick Bacchus (Bacchino Malato) indicates Caravaggio’s physical ailment involving malaria during his first years in Rome but depicts an alluring god of drink and vice. Erizku twists art history to draw attention to the lack of racial diversity represented in the canon and the depiction of the beauty of African Americans.
A photographer with a sharp eye and keen wit, Erizku observed that there weren’t many museum masterpieces featuring people of color and set to recreate the classics. “The models I choose to work with are not professional models but possess an undeniable, striking beauty,” declares Erizku. His practice bridges the gap between African and African American visual culture, referencing art history, hip hop, and universal human culture.
Erizku received a BFA from The Cooper Union in 2010 and a MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2014. He exhibited at institutions across the country including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include New Visions for Iris , Public Art Fund, New York, NY and Chicago, IL, 2021; Mystic Parallax, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY, 2020; Desire: A Revision from the 20th Century to the Digital Age, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2019. Erizku lives and works in Los Angeles.
Estimate
$15,000 – $25,000
Mickalene thomas (1971 - )
Liz and Chair with Zebra .
C-print, 2013. 1219x1219 mm; 48x48 inches (sheet); 1334x1321x640 mm, 52½x52x2½ inches (framed). One of two artist’s proofs, aside from the edition of 5. Signed, dated, titled, numbered 1/2 and inscribed “Chromogenic Print, 52x52 in.” in ink, lower right verso.
Provenance: acquired from Lehmann Maupin, New York, with the labels on the frame back; private collection, Virginia (2019).
Estimate
$30,000 – $40,000
Contemporary Part III
Glenn ligon (1960 - )
Untitled (My Fear is Your Fear).
Screenprint on black wove paper, 1995. 308x232 mm; 12⅛x9⅛ inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 171/325 in pencil, lower margin. Published by Max Protech Gallery, New York. With original folder and gallery label.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Ellen gallagher (1965 - )
Untitled .
Color woodcut, etching, aquatint and screenprint on Japon nacre paper, 1997. 1006x573 mm; 39½x26½ inches (sheet). With the embossed signature, lower right. Dated and numbered 25/25 in pencil, lower left. Printed and published by Limited Art Editions, New York.
Another impression is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Ellen gallagher (1965 - )
Alias II .
Offset lithograph on cream wove paper, 2000. 349×279 mm; 13¾×11 inches (sheet). Signed, dated and numbered 30/32 in pencil, lower edge. Printed and published by the LeRoi Neiman Center for Print Studies, Columbia University, New York. From the portfolio Ssblak!Ssblak!Ssblakallblak!Wonder#9.
The complete portfolio is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Hughie lee-smith (1915 - 1999)
Quandary .
Oil on linen canvas, 1997. 1270x1168 mm; 50x46 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.
Provenance: the estate of the artist; thence by descent to the current owner, private collection.
Exhibited: Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA.
According to the estate, the artist's original title for the painting was Quandary ; it was changed posthumously to View From The Window as indicated on the label.
This colorful canvas explores representation, and epitomizes the Surrealism found in Hughie Lee-Smith's late-career painting. The compressed space, architectural elements and faceless mannequin inhabit a metaphysical, dream-like space and reflect the influence of Giorgio De Chirico. In the Hughie Lee-Smith papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Lee-Smith wrote in a 1988 letter to Lowery Stokes Sims, "those who exerted an extraordinary influence of the direction of my painting were: Steumpfig, Evergood, the Berman Brothers, Peter Blume, Hopper, Balthus, and particularly Giorgio De Chirico." The sun-drenched light and floating balloon reinforce the frozen moment, whilst the arrows illustrate the choices an artist has to make in defining a subject. Full of intrigue and beauty, Quandary is an excellent example of the final period of Lee-Smith's oeuvre.
Estimate
$40,000 – $60,000
Francis a. sprout (1940 - 2017)
El Medio from Convent Street .
Graphite on cream wove paper, 1995. 533x419 mm; 21x16½ inches. Signed, titled, dated “9/4/95” and inscribed © in pencil, lower margin. From the artist’s Plaques series
Provenance: private collection, New York.
This intriguing drawing is from Sprout’s later career exploration of the forms of plaques, doorways, books and masks. Sprout considered them as both spiritual and physical vehicles as well as gateways between African and Western culture. Sprout is best known for his 1970s Muslim Tile Pattern series of paintings and prints, and his painting Azo had pride of place at the Johnson Publishing Company - hanging in the executive dining room.
Born and raised in Arizona, Sprout studied studio art and art education in the School of Art at the University of Arizona in the 1960s. He enrolled in the MFA program of the University of California, San Diego, in fall 1970, where he progressed from figuration into abstraction, and learned of Islamic ornamentation and imagery in his art history studies of North African culture. Sprout had a long career as a painter, printmaker and art educator. He taught visual art through the 1980s in Denver; first at the University of Denver before becoming a tenured professor at Metropolitan State College. He took a sabattical, returning to Los Angeles in 1984, and earned an MA in African Studies with a concentration on African art history from UCLA in 1990. Sprout moved to Purchase, New York with his wife, museum director and curator Lucinda Gedeon, where he taught at Purchase College and the Pratt Institute of Art. They then moved to Vero Beach, Florida, where Sprout continued to teach and paint. Sprout exhibited widely, and his artwork is in the collections of Arizona State University Museum of Art, the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Johns Manville Corporation, Atlanta and Pfizer Learning Center, Rye Brook, New York.
Estimate
$1,000 – $1,500
Belkis ayón (1967 - 1999)
Intolerancia .
Collograph on cream wove paper, 1998. 787 mm; 31 inches diameter (tondo), full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 2/10 in pencil, with the printer's blind stamp, lower margin.
Provenance: acquired from Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles, private collection, California,.
Exhibited: Desasosiego/Restlessness, Couturier Gallery & Fine Art Appraisals, Los Angeles, March 1998; I Always Return. Collographies of Belkis Ayón , VII Biennial of Havana, Habana Gallery, Havana, Cuba, November 15 - December 18, 2000 (another impression); Eva sale y remonta vuelo, Eva deja de ser Costilla, curated by Gabriela García Azcuy, Embassy of Spain in Cuba, Havana, Cuba, October, 2014 (another impression).
Haunting and beguiling, Intolerencia is a collograph from Belkis Ayón's final body of works. The tondo lures the spectator into a world of existential loss and faceless figures who are stripped of their voice. The layered collage-like appearance of the image is based on Ayón's expert collographic technique, utilizing mixed-media and absorbencies in her collaged cardboard matrix to create a printed lexicon rich in nuances and textures.
Estimate
$35,000 – $50,000
David driskell (1931 - 2020)
Masked Forest.
Mixed-media and gouache on paper, 1999. 552x419 mm; 21¾x16½ inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, Virginia (1999).
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
Kyra e. hicks (1965 - )
I Count!
Quilt of various cotton fabrics with sequins, beads and acrylic, 1999. 2032x1828 mm; 80x72 inches.
Provenance: collection of the artist.
Exhibited: Parallels and Intersections: Artists Quilt a World, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum, Cincinnati, OH, 2006, curated by Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi; Diversity of the Cloth, Portfolio Gallery, St. Louis, MO, 2003.
I Count! is a dynamic visual statement and beautiful artwork by quilter, art historian and writer Kyra Hicks, and her first art quilt to come to auction. I Count! is an excellent example of Hicks' unique expression in quilt making. Addressing issues of representation and expression, her works combine strong visual design with text and features impeccable construction. Two similar quilts of hers are in permanent museum collections: Black Barbie, 1996 at the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY and Patriotic Quilt, 1995 at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Her work has also been in several group exhibitions including at the American Craft Museum, New York, the Smithsonian Institution’s Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC, the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT. Hicks's quilts were the subject of a PhD dissertation by Yolanda Woods, New World African Conjurers Who Edify and Heal the Community, and the artist is included in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore, vol. 2 (2006).
Born in Los Angeles, Hicks is a self-taught artist. Hicks works professionally as an ecommerce and marketing director. She earned a BA in business from Howard University and MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The artist has transitioned from quiltmaking to writing about African American quilt history. Hicks has written over a dozen books on various quilt subjects, including the authoritative guide Black Threads: An African American Quilting Sourcebook, the children’s book Martha Ann’s Quilt for Queen Victoria and the quilt history This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
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; 9⅜x8⅜ 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 story of a free life written in the mode of a fairy tale quickly mimics her dark and provocative imagery. Freedom, A Fable, details the racial and sexual horrors that awaited young African American women in the 19th century.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Kara walker (1969 - )
The Emancipation Approximation (Scene #15).
Color screenprint on Somerset 500G paper, 2000. 1120x862 mm; 44⅛x33<7/8> inches. Edition of 20 plus 5 artist's proofs. Signed, dated and numbered III/XXV in pencil, verso. Printed by Jean Yves Noblet, New York. Published by Jenkins Sikkema Editions, New York. From The Emancipation Approximation series.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
Louis delsarte (1944 - 2020)
The Letter .
Color screenprint on Rising ply rag paper, 2003. 628x469 mm; 24¾x18½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 24/100 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by Lou Stovall at the Workshop, Inc., Washington, DC, with the blind stamp, lower left.
Another impression of this print is in the permanent collection of the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library.
The Letter was painted during the 1991 Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn and pays homage to Delsarte’s mother, Llewellyn. It was featured on the cover of American Psychologist magazine in 2004.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
Elizabeth catlett (1915 - 2012)
Gossip.
Color photolithograph and digital print on Somerset wove paper, 2005. 394x457 mm; 15 1/2x18 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 172/200 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by the Brodsky Center for Innovative Print and Paper, Rutgers University, with the blind stamp lower left. Published by the New York Print Club.
Estimate
$2,000 – $3,000
David driskell (1931 - 2020)
African Woman, Windows .
Color woodcut and monoprint, 2004. 469x571 mm; 18½x22½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 4/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Curlee R. Holton at the Experimental Printmaking Institute at Lafayette College, Easton Pennsylvania. Commissioned by the David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA. Childs pl. 56; pp. 93 and 117.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Winfred rembert (1945 - 2021)
All Me .
Color reduction woodcut with screenprint on BFK Rives paper, 2014. 304x393 mm; 12x15½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 1/38 in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published at the Master Print Project, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where Winfred Rembert was an artist-in-residence.
All Me is also the name of the artist's series of paintings and prints.
Rembert's autobiographical print is filled with undulating figures swinging their axes under what one can imagine are the worst possible conditions. The black and white stripes of the uniforms blend together and become an abstract composition. The twisted bodies and ghost-like facial expressions are ones the artist would have seen daily for seven years.
Estimate
$5,000 – $7,000
Danny simmons (1953 - )
Might Fade Away .
Oil and collage on cotton canvas, 2005. 1524x1524 mm; 60x60 inches. Signed and dated in ink, upper right verso.
Provenance: private collection.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
Danny simmons (1953 - )
United We Stand.
Oil, charcoal and pastel on thick wove paper, 2006. 558x762 mm; 22x30 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower left.
Provenance: private collection.
Exhibited: Bill Hodges Gallery, New York, with the label on the frame back.
Estimate
$4,000 – $6,000
Sam gilliam (1933 - )
Untitled .
Monotype with oil, hand coloring and machine-sewn thread on die-cut paper, 2007. Approximately 736x1041 mm; 29x41 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from Studio-F at the University of Tampa; private collection, New Jersey.
Estimate
$6,000 – $9,000
Richard mayhew (1924 - )
Serenade .
Color lithograph on cream wove paper, 2008. 419x635 mm; 16½x25 inches, full margins. Printer’s proof, aside from edition of 80. Signed, titled, and inscribed “PP” in pencil, lower margin. Printed and published by the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Richard mayhew (1924 - )
Landscape For Bob .
Color lithograph on wove paper, 2013. 457x609 mm; 18x24 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 65/90 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Curlee R. Holton at Raven Limited Editions, Easton, PA and commissioned by the David C. Driskell Center, to raise funds for the 2014 exhibition Passages: Robert Blackburn, an exhibition dedicated to the prints of Robert Blackburn.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of the David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,500
Faith ringgold (1930 - )
Somebody Stole My Broken Heart.
Color screenprint on wove paper, 2007. 762x572 mm; 30x22½ inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated, and numbered 28/60 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by the Brodsky Center for Innovative Print and Paper, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
Provenance: ACA Galleries, New York, with the label on the frame back.
Another impression of this print is in the collection of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Barbara jones-hogu (1938 - 2017)
God’s Child .
Color screenprint on Arches 88 paper, 2009. 596x366 mm; 23½x14 inches, full margins. Signed, titled and numbered 25/30 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Thomas Lucas of Hummingbird Press, Chicago, with the blindstamp, lower margin. Published by Lusenhop Fine Art, Chicago.
Additional impressions are in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the DePaul Art Museum, the Chazen Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami.
Illustrated: Jeffreen N. Hayes, AFRICOBRA: Messages to the People, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, with Gregory R. Miller & Co., p. 7.
God’s Child was the first screenprint made by Jones-Hogu in over thirty years, after having stopped making prints in the mid-1970s. The work depicts the artist as a young girl, and includes the distinctive, stylized lettering that Jones-Hogu featured in many of her AfriCOBRA prints.
Estimate
$1,500 – $2,000
Michael a. cummings (1945 - )
Martin Luther King Jr .
Quilt with appliqué, including fabrics, plastic letters and a metal sign, 2013. 1854x1346 mm; 73x53 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower left recto. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed “73x53” in ink on a fabric label, verso.
Provenance: collection of the artist, New York.
This narrative quilt from Michael Cummings highlights various quotes by Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. stitched on its surface. Stitched on the quilt are also the names of people that marched and died during the Civil Rights movement, including Medgar Evers, Denise McNair and Addie Mae Collins. The surface is embellished with text, a blazer, plastic letters, and a metal sign.
Cummings is widely regarded as one of the nation’s leading African American quilters. A Los Angeles native, he moved to New York City in 1970 and became friends with Romare Bearden. He experimented with collage in various media, and by 1975, moved strictly to fabric. Today, he lives and works in Harlem. Other quilts by Cummings are in the permanent collections of the American Craft Museum, New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the California African American Museum, Atlanta Life Insurance, Renwick Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Museum of Art and Design, New York. Cummings was previously commissioned by the Art in Embassies, Absolut Vodka, the City of Knoxville, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the PerCent for Art, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and HBO.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
Dindga McCannon (1947 - )
Harlem Elder Diva Speaks .
Mixed-media quilt assemblage, with hand embroidery, collage and appliqué, 2014. 1003x724 mm; 39½x28½ inches (43½ inches in height with tassels). Signed "dindga", titled and dated in stitched purple thread, verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, New York.
Exhibited: i found god in myself: the 40th anniversary of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, October 6, 2016 - January 8, 2017.
Highlighting the strength and wisdom of a woman who has fully experienced the peaks and valleys of life, Dindga McCannon portrays a Harlemite sharing her wisdom with others. A consummate Renaissance woman, McCannon is a painter, printmaker, fashion and jewelry designer, quilter/textile artist, author and illustrator. Harlem Elder Diva Speaks captures her ability to adapt various media to create textile works that convey narratives that are not often told.
McCannon knew she wanted to be an artist from an early age, learning to sew from her mother and grandmother as a child. She chose not to attend college to study art - instead, she studied independently with artists Richard Mayhew, Al Hollingsworth and Charles Alston. McCannon became a member of the Weusi Artist Collective in the late 1960s, and was a founding member of "Where We At", Black Women Artists, Inc. (WWA), a collective of Black women artists affiliated with the Black Arts Movement. McCannon, Faith Ringgold and Kay Brown held the first WWA meeting in early 1971 in McCannon's Brooklyn home. McCannon also illustrated several books by Edgar White as well as wrote and illustrated two books of her own, Peaches and Wilhemina Jones, Future Star. Her artworks are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Michigan State University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Estimate
$25,000 – $35,000
Richard wyatt jr. (1955 - )
Maya Angelou .
Pencil on wove paper, 2014. 215x292 mm; 8½x11½ inches. Signed and dated in pencil, lower left.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, the estate of Carroll Ann Parrott Blue, TX.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Accra shepp (1962 - )
Morgan .
Gelatin silver emulsion on tobacco leaf on handmade Japan paper, 2004. 647x622 mm; 25½x24½ inches, (sheet). From the series The Tobacco Project 2003 - 2007.
Morgan is from Accra Shepp's study that explores photoreactive materials and a socio-economic investigation of the history of tobacco farming. The leaves he uses in replacement of photopaper are dried then flattened. Next, they are chemically treated. Ultimately, a light-sensitive coating is applied to record and fix the image. From 2003 - 2007, Shepp traveled to three farms in Georgia, Kentucky, and North Carolina to explore the relationship of tobacco farmers with their crop and the land on which it grows. He uses photoreactive materials to transform dried leaves into canvases that explore tobacco's fraught history and cultivation through the use of 18th and 19th-century enslavement to 21st-century migrant labor.
Born 1962 in New York City, Shepp is a writer and photographer. He graduated from Princeton University in 1984, where he studied with Emmet Gowin, then attained an MFA from NYU where he studied at the Institute of Fine Arts and the Conservation Center. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and The Victoria and Albert Museum.
Estimate
$3,000 – $5,000
Kerry james marshall (1955 - )
Keeping the Culture .
Color linoleum cut and screenprint on Arches, 2011. 445x711 mm; 17½x28 inches, full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 71/100 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Thomas Lucas at Hummingbird Press, Chicago.
Estimate
$8,000 – $12,000
Larry walker (1935 - )
Dialogue Xl, Platinum Hits .
Acrylic and collage on watercolor paper, 2007. 559x711 mm; 22x28 inches. Signed in acrylic, lower right.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, Georgia.
This expressive collage is an excellent example of the work of distinguished artist and educator Larry Walker. Born in Franklin, GA, Walker studied at Wayne State University, Detroit, earning a BS in art education in 1958, and an MA in drawing and painting in 1963. Walker was a professor of drawing and painting in the Department of Art, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA, from 1964-83, and then director at the School of Art and Design, Georgia State University, Atlanta from 1983 until his retirement in 2000. Walker has taught and mentored many artists including his daughter, Kara Walker, and has exhibited in over 40 solo exhibitions and countless group exhibitions over a four decade career. The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia held a survey of this period of collage with Larry Walker Retrospective: The Later Years, June 2, 2018 - July 31, 2018. His artworks are found in many institutional collections including the High Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and MOCA GA.
Estimate
$10,000 – $15,000
Victor H. Sparrow IV (1967 - )
Red-Lining, 1962, #1 .
Ink and stencil on collaged and folded papers, 2022. Approximately 813x1041 mm; 32x41 inches. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 1/2 in pencil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection: Washington, DC.
Artist Victor Sparrow explores the imagery of divided urban spaces with his collage in Red Lining - 1962, #1 . This collage, inspired by a sign from Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie, is related to a public art project for DC that the artist has been working on since 2012. Sparrow is investigating the similarities between the Berlin Wall and the 1960s riots in DC, looking at the urban partitions they both created. Before earning an MFA degree in painting from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993, Sparrow was the recipient of honors with a Skowhegan residency, a fellowship for a National Gallery of Art internship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. His work is in such collections of the William Benton Museum of the University of Connecticut and Mary Lou and George B. (Spike) Bietzel, Chappaqua, NY.