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Elizabeth Catlett, Hughie Lee Smith Lead Swann African-American Sale in October

September 20, 2018 by Marion Maneker

While the rest of the Contemporary art world is fixated on Frieze and the London sales accompanying the influx of art collectors to the UK, New York’s Swann Galleries will another African-American art auction. Long the pioneer in this market, Swann had it’s best sale in April making $4.5m in the category, or as much in a single sale as Swann was able to generate in three sales during the breakout year of 2015.

With all of the talk today about African-American artists, which undoubtedly presages a big push from Sotheby’s to make more sales of African-American Contemporary artists this November, it’s good to remember the historical category has shown great strength.

Here’s Swann’s release for the sale featuring the work of Hughie Lee Smith (above):

African-American Fine Art sales at Swann Galleries offer the opportunity to see marketplace history happen, and the October 4 auction is no exception, with a significant selection of works by Elizabeth Catlett, Eldzier Cortor and Hughie Lee-Smith, among others.

A timely run of works by Charles White features the significant and powerful Nobody Knows My Name #1, 1965, a mid-career drawing that was exhibited extensively in the late 1960s (Estimate: $100,000 to $150,000). The title was likely inspired by James Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son, 1961–White’s composition shows a young African-American man’s head in a swirling, atmospheric space, a deeply symbolic response to the height of the Civil Rights movement. Prints by White includethe linoleum cuts Young Farmer (Young Worker), 1953, and Solid as a Rock (My God is Rock), 1958 ($12,000-18,000 and $20,000-30,000, respectively).

Sculptures by Elizabeth Catlett represent the beginning and end of the artist’s prolific career. Catlett’s carved Untitled (Head of a Man), circa 1943, is one of only two stone works on record from her significant 1940s period, and the earliest sculpture by the artist known to come to auction ($200,000-300,000). El Abrazo, carving in Guatemalan red mahogany of two figures embracing, is Catlett’s last sculpture: it was started by the artist in 2010 and posthumously completed by her son, David Mora Catlett, in 2017 ($150,000-250,000)

A beautiful mid-career painting by Eldzier Cortor–the most significant work by the artist to come to auction–will be offered. Sea of Time, 1945, is a haunting depiction of a female nude with rich symbolism and surreal elements, inspired by Gullah and African traditions. The oil on canvas is estimated at $200,000 to $300,000.

Other midcentury compositions include the earliest painting by Beauford Delaney to come to auction. The 1940 oil on canvas is a self-portrait of the artist in a studio-like setting with a young woman thought to be “Jessie,” a model and mutual friend of Delaney and James Baldwin ($200,000-300,000). Hughie Lee-Smith’s best-known and most widely published work, Man With Balloons, oil on canvas, 1960, will also be in the sale. A meditation on the isolation of modernity, Lee-Smith considered it an important painting: it carries an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000.

A riotous, recently rediscovered 1965 oil and charcoal on canvas by Al Loving, Variations on a Square­, gives insight into the artist’s earliest work. The artist notes, in a letter included, that it was completed for his thesis show and was one his last oil paintings, remarking on it as a “forerunner to the geometric abstractions that started my career in NY” ($80,000-120,000).

A 1983 self-portrait by Robert Colescott: Down in the Dumps: So Long Sweetheart shows the heartbroken artist seated among an overwhelming, teeming pile of debris, his head in his hands, paintbrushes at his side ($35,000-50,000). Other works from that decade include a 1980 welded steel sculpture by Melvin Edwards, Lusaka ($30,000-40,000); Sam Gilliam’s Blood Legacy, acrylic, gel medium and canvas collage, 1983 ($80,000-120,000) and Spiral artist Emma Amos’s Arched Swimmer, acrylic with glitter and fabric on canvas, circa 1987 ($10,000-15,000).

Contemporary art from the Dr. Robert H. Derden Collection brings pieces by significant, current artists to the sale, with an emphasis on photographic works. Featured lots include Rashid Johnson’s Jonathan with Hands, a Van Dyke Brown photo-emulsion print, 1997 ($7,000-10,000); Alison Saar’s Dreamer, mixed media, 1988 ($3,000-5,000); Carrie Mae Weems’s Untitled (Woman and daughter with makeup), from the Kitchen Table Series ($3,000-5,000); and a monumental photogravure with screenprint by Lorna Simpson, Counting, 1991 ($4,000-6,000).

Swann African-American Art = $4.5m

April 6, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Norman Lewis, Untitled ($725,000)

Swann’s African-American Art sale was a record for the category and the auction house. The volume of bidding caused the sale to run twice as long as the usual event at Swann. The top lots, a Norman Lewis painting that sold for three times the high estimate and a Beauford Delaney work that made twice the high estimate, were not the only works to significantly out-perform. Sam Gilliam’s untitled bevelled work continued his market run with a $233k sale that was nearly four times the high estimate.

There were twelve artists’ records set during the sale as Swann continues to develop a category that they pioneered.

Sale total: $4,509,540

Estimates for the sale as a whole: $2,036,500-$3,070,000
160 lots offered, 134 sold (84% sell-through rate by lot)

All prices include Buyer’s Premium.

Top lots
45† Norman Lewis, Untitled, oil on canvas, 1956. $725,000 C
33* Beauford Delaney, Untitled (Village Street Scene), oil on canvas, 1948. $557,000 I
50* Charles White, O Freedom, charcoal with crayon & wash on board, 1956. $509,000 D
55 Jacob Lawrence, 19. Tension on the High Seas, tempera on board, 1956. $413,000 C
77* Hale Woodruff, Primordial Landscape, oil on canvas, 1967. $245,000 C
93 Sam Gilliam, Untitled, acrylic on beveled canvas, 1972. $233,000 C
28† Elizabeth Catlett, Head of a Woman (Woman), oil on canvas, 1942-22. $209,000 I
25* William H. Johnson, Jitterbugs III, color screenprint and pochoir, circa 1941. $118,750 C
24 Johnson, Jitterbugs II, color screenprint and pochoir, circa 1941. $112,500 C
133* Ed Clark, Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 1890. $93,750 C
88* Vincent D. Smith, Attrition, oil and sand on canvas, 1972. $67,500 C
118 Romare Bearden, Obeah Woman with her Daughter (La Sorcière avec sa fille), watercolor, circa 1984. $60,000 C
1 Charles Ethan Porter, Sunflowers, oil on canvas, circa 1880s. $50,000 C
149 Frank Bowling, Man Overboard, acrylic and acrylic gel on stitched canvas, 2000. $50,000 I
40 Hughie Lee-Smith, The Bouquet, oil on board, 1949. $50,000 I
37* Robert Neal, Rearguard, oil on canvas, 1950. $45,000 D
7 Aaron Douglas, Emperor Jones, set of four woodcuts, 1926. $40,000 I
74 Jack Whitten, Untitled, oil on canvas, 1967. $37,500 C
132 Clark, Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 1990. $37,500 C
155* Richard Mayhew, Cherry Hill, oil on canvas, 2004. $32,500 C

Key: * = Artist Record; † = Second-highest price for artist at auction; C = Collector; D = Dealer; I = Institution

Beauford Delaney, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, Charles White and Elizabeth Catlett Lead Swann African-American Art Sale

March 15, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Beauford Delaney’s large Untitled (Village Street Scene), 1948, ($150- 250k)

Swann will hold its African American art sale on April 5th featuring works by Jacob Lawrence, Charles White, Beauford Delaney, Sam Gilliam. Here’s what Swann says about the sale:

  • Tension on the High Seas from Jacob Lawrence’s 1954-56 series Struggle . . . From the History of the American People. Until now, the whereabouts of five of the 30 panels from the series were lost. The rediscovery and auction debut of 19. Tension on the High Seas is expected to reinvigorate the search for the remaining four panels; it is estimated at $75,000 to $100,000.
  • A stunning, larger-than-life charcoal portrait by Charles White, O Freedom, 1956, depicts a young man framed against the sky in an open and uplifting gesture of hope. It leads the sale at $200,000 to $300,000–the first time the drawing has been exhibited publicly in 60 years.
  • Vibrant paintings by modernist New York artists include Beauford Delaney’s large Untitled (Village Street Scene), 1948, (above) which depicts a Greenwich Village corner in bold citrine impasto and carries an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000. An untitled mid-career abstraction by Norman Lewis, 1956, explores a city crowd surrounded by thin veils of pulsating color ($150,000 to $250,000). Sam Gilliam is represented with a selection led by an arresting purple and orange beveled-edge canvas from 1972, at the height of his experimental “soak stain” approach to color field painting ($40,000 to $60,000).
  •  the second oil painting by Elizabeth Catlett ever to come to market, Head of a Woman (Woman), 1943-44, carrying an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000. Also superlative is the largest work by Ed Clark ever to come to auction, Untitled, 1990, a dynamic composition in four colors, with an estimate of $60,000 to $90,000. Jack Whitten. Primordial Landscape, 1967, is an excellent example of Hale Woodruff’s postwar painting, in which he describes landscape and natural phenomena within the idiom of Abstract Expressionism ($80,000 to $120,000).

Swann African American Sale Catalogue

Swann African American = $2.7m

October 10, 2017 by Marion Maneker

Sam Gilliam, Rubiyat

Although his work was not the highest valued sales at Swann’s African American Art auction on October 5th, Sam Gilliam was the big winner last week. His Rubiyat significantly out-performed estimates. A more recent work from 2001 also did quite well.

Also significantly out-performing was Norman Lewis’s work.

Sale total: $2,750,585 | Estimates for sale (without premium): $2,283,500-$3,371,000; 154 lots offered; 124 sold (81% sell-through rate by lot)

All prices include Buyer’s Premium.

  1. 4       Henry Ossawa Tanner, Flight into Egypt, oil on canvas, circa 1910.                                                     $341,000 I
  2. 48      Norman Lewis, Untitled (Processional Composition), oil on marbleized slate, 1960.                              $233,000 C
  3. 88      Sam Gilliam, Rubiyat, acrylic and flocking on canvas, 1973.                                                               $191,000 C
  4. 20**  Elizabeth Catlett, War Worker, tempera, 1943.                                                                                 $149,000 C
  5. 31      Hughie Lee-Smith, Untitled (Youths on a Lakeshore), oil on board, 1952.                                            $93,750 C
  6. 39*    Richmond Barthé, The Awakening of Africa, cast bronze, 1959.                                                          $87,500 D
  7. 68      Charles White, I Have A Dream, Series #11 (Study for the Wall), oil on board, 1968.                             $81,250 C
  8. 12      Barthé, Stevedore, cast bronze on marble base, modeled in 1937, cast in 1985.                                       $75,000 D
  9. 150    Eldzier Cortor, Lady with Fan II, oil on canvas, 2005.                                                                                   $75,000 C
  10. 147    Gilliam, Not Spinning, acrylic on plywood construction with aluminum frame, 2001-04.                         $57,500 C
  11. 124    Lee-Smith, Interlude, oil on canvas, 1991.                                                                                       $55,000 C
  12. 125    Lee-Smith, The Encounter, oil on canvas, 1991.                                                                               $52,500 C
  13. 95*    Ernie Barnes, The Maestro, acrylic on canvas in artist-built frame, circa 1978.                                        $47,500 C
  14. 42      Alma W. Thomas, In the Studio, oil on canvas, 1956.                                                                                   $45,000 C
  15. 129    Carrie Mae Weems, Sea Island Series, quadriptych with two silver prints and two text panels, 1992.         $45,000 C
  16. 101    Catlett, Glory, cast bronze on wood base, 1981.                                                                                $40,000 I
  17. 1       Edward M. Bannister, Untitled (Rhode Island Coastal Scene), oil on canvas, circa 1885-89.                     $40,000 I
  18. 109    Romare Bearden, The Evening Boat, collage and watercolor on board, 1984.                                          $40,000 C
  19. 110    Bearden, At the Dock, watercolor, 1984.                                                                                          $37,500 C
  20. 21    Jacob Lawrence, Eight Passages, eight color screenprints illustrating the Book of Genesis, 1990.              $30,000 C

 

Barkley Hendricks Big Week at Sotheby’s

May 22, 2017 by Marion Maneker

Barkley Hendricks in his New London studio, 1976, from Birth of Cool, the catalogue of his 2008 retrospective

The website Culture Type was paying close attention to the clutch of Barkley Hendricks works on offer at Sotheby’s. The painter, who died recently, had been a mainstay of Swann’s African American sales progressively setting record prices in the mid-six figures.

At Sotheby’s on Friday, those prices were left behind as two works bumped up against the seven-figure barrier in quick succession. The interest in Hendricks has become so intense, copies of the catalogue from the Nasher Museum’s 2008 retrospective of his work, Birth of Cool, are trading on Amazon for more than $1100 in hardcover and nearly $500 in paperback:

“Yocks” sold for $942,500 (including fee) at Sotheby’s New York, a record for the artist, which only held for a few moments.

Lot 188: BARKLEY HENDRICKS (1945-2017), “The Way You Look Tonight / Diagonal Graciousness,” 1981 (oil, acrylic and white gold leaf on linen). Estimate $200,000-$300,000. Sold for $960,500 (including fees).

Lot 189: BARKLEY HENDRICKS (1945-2017), “Innocence & Friend,” 1977 (oil and aluminum leaf on canvas, in two parts). | Estimate $100,000-$150,000. Sold for $396,500 (including fees)

Sotheby’s Posthumous Sale of 3 Paintings by Barkley L. Hendricks Yields Artist Record  (Culture Type)

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