CHICAGO – Potter & Potter Auctions will conduct a 570-lot Outsider, Folk, and Fine Art Sale on Wednesday, June 28, starting at 10 am Central time. Among the highlights is a canvas mixed media work by Chicago street artist Lee Goldie. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.

This is the first sale for Potter & Potter Auctions’ Director & Specialist, Fine & Outsider Art Aron Packer. He is a well-known and respected curator and gallerist who has worked in the Chicago art scene for three decades.

The first half of this sale features exceptional and unusual outsider, folk and other eccentric artworks. The second half features numerous Chicago artists, other pieces from different time periods, mediums and genres, and features contemporary art from the estate of Richard Christiansen (1931–2022) the chief theatre reviewer of the Chicago Tribune for more than two decades, as well as 43 over-the-top artworks from the collection of Judith and Howard Tullman.

Key pieces by legacy outsider and folk artists feature in this late June event, led by Howard Finster’s (1916-2001) Early Paradise Garden Painting Pre-Numbering, estimated at $10,000-$20,000. This signed enamel-on-Masonite piece is unframed and measures 10¼ by 30¾in. Finster was an artist and Baptist minister from Georgia. He came to popular notice in the 1980s with his album cover designs for R.E.M. and the Talking Heads. His works are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, High Museum of Art and the Milwaukee Museum of Art.

Karl Wirsum’s (1939-2021) Chili Heels appears in the sale with an estimate of $3,000-$5,000. This colored pencil and ink on paper work from 1981 measures 29½ by 22½in with a frame size of 37½ by 30in. It features a classic example of a Wirsum-esque figure with an androgynous body clothed in form-fitting pants and an asymmetrical bra. The figure has identical arms, seemingly with teeth; its feet sport ice cream cone stiletto heels.

Mixed media works and those executed on unconventional substrates are also featured in this sale, such as Lee Godie’s (1908-1994) Figures, estimated at $2,000-$3,000. This 1980s-era piece is signed on the recto and the verso and titled on the verso. It is comprised of a window shade canvas with ballpoint pen, with a color photobooth photo at its lower left and a knit glove at its lower right; both are attached with safety pins. One side is illustrated with the John Hancock building, a figure in a dress leaning on a butterfly table, and a classic portrait of a woman with a hat and a brooch. The reverse features another portrait with a hand and grapes brooch with a title, signature and other commentary.

Mose Tolliver’s (1915-2006) Large Painted Chair with Figure, Trees and Flowers has an estimate of $1,500-$2,500. This circa-1980s work measures 24 by 18in and is signed on its lower left. It is decorated with a figure of a woman, flowers, trees and snakes. This is an outdoor porch chair with a newer plywood seat drilled down where the cushion normally would be. There are few Tolliver chairs extant, and this is the largest one Potter’s experts have seen.

Other key categories in this sale include works by, or featuring, some of the world’s best known 19th- and 20th-century artists – for example, Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), who is represented by Le Printemps … Montpellier: Serre & Roumegous, a lithograph poster from 1900 estimated at $3,000-$5,000. It is matted and framed and includes a COA from Galerie Michael.

This sale also contains pieces that bridge conventional artwork classifications. Chief among them is Neiman Eisman’s (1889-1956) Daughter of Undetermined Sex, estimated at $2,000-$3,000. This paint on canvas folk art banner for a sideshow act featuring a hermaphrodite dates to around 1920. It is signed by the artist on the lower right corner and measures 96 by 120in. Eisman was the master of Chicago-style sideshow and circus banner paintings.

Completing the highlights is an untitled World War II USO unstretched and unframed mural, estimated at $1,000-$2,000. This 1942 oil on canvas measures 42 by 215in, is signed “Patti Doty Smith” and is dated at its lower right. It is covered with dozens upon dozens of cartoon characters of the past and of the time.

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