BOSTON – Skinner Inc. will launch its 2010 season with a strong sale of American and European paintings and prints on Jan. 29, commencing at noon Eastern Time in the company’s Boston gallery. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding for the sale, which features many artworks from private collections, some unseen for decades.
One of the sale’s highlights is Georgia O’Keeffe Alligator Pear in White Dish, 1921. Included in her catalogue raisonne, volume II, and evidenced by a photograph her husband Alfred Stieglitz took, the painting had been considered lost since the mid-1950s when it was last known to have been purchased by a Cape Cod collector. The painting is representative of O’Keeffe’s early work, depicting “nature in her simplest appearance,” and is indicative of O’Keeffe’s artistic relationship with modernist painter Arthur Dove. Alligator Pear in White Dish is estimated at $100,000-$150,000.
Another anticipated gem of the Jan. 29 sale and veiled from public view since the 1960s is an Arnaldo Pomodoro sculpture, Rotante primo sezionale n. 1 (Rotating First Section No. 1). Coming to Skinner from the collection of Melvin B. Nessel of Boston, founder of the Fenton Show Corporation of Cambridge, Mass., the work is one of two artist’s proofs outside the edition of two. This three-dimensional sphere was something of a transitional piece for Pomodoro; the disintegration of form is more geometrical than in the other works. The Pomodoro is conservatively estimated at $100,000-$150,000.
One more featured treasure is a long-hidden-away Yves Tanguy titled Sans Titre. From the estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (née Braman) Grasso, the piece is illustrative of Tanguy’s early American work, similar to the art he produced in Europe, but with a more saturated palette. Sans Titre is estimated at $40,000-$60,000.
Robin Starr, Director of American & European Paintings & Prints at Skinner, commented: “We have worked hard to heighten the quality of the works we’re offering. Many of the lots included here are true masterpieces and are fresh to the market, as well.”
A few additional offerings of note include Alexander Calder’s Germination, estimated at $40,000-$60,000; Jesus Rafael Soto’s Struttura, also from the Nessel collection and estimated at $30,000-$40,000; and Arab Horsemen by Adolf Schreyer, under glass and in impeccable condition, estimated at $20,000-$30,000.
For information on any lot in the sale, call Skinner at 508-970-3000.
View the fully illustrated catalog and sign up to bid absentee or live via the Internet at www.LiveAuctioneers.com.
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ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE
