Innholdsfortegnelse for May-June 2023/No. 69 i American Fine Art Magazine

Welcome to the May/June issue of American Fine Art Magazine! We are proud to announce our new Collector’s Focus: The Modernist Perspective. Historic modernism is fascinating. It opens the doors to some truly exciting artwork that stretches throughout much of the 20th century, including exciting forms of modern art that emerged after World War II. This includes artists like Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Andrew Wyeth and many more. There are so many artists that shaped this movement that we felt compelled to shine a spotlight on this unique genre for our collectors. There are a few reasons for this. First, our historic art galleries are increasingly incorporating these genres into their shows and exhibitions. As a reader of the magazine, you know we have focused on all kinds…

APRIL 27 Fine Art Auction Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers • Milford, CT www.shannons.com MAY (DATES TBA) American Art Sotheby’s • New York, NY www.sothebys.com MAY 9 California & American Fine Art John Moran Auctioneers • Monrovia, CA www.johnmoran.com MAY 12 American Art Signature Auction Heritage Auctions • Dallas, TX www.ha.com MAY 17-18 Art of the West Santa Fe Art Auction • Santa Fe, NM www.santafeartauction.com MAY 19 American Art Hindman Auctions • Chicago, IL www.hindmanauctions.com MAY 25 American Art Bonhams • New York, NY www.bonhams.com…

Although born in Stuttgart, Germany, to American parents, Agnes Pelton became a quintessential artist of the mystical American Southwest. Her abstract work is full of the sublime sensuality of the desert’s numinous silence, its merciless and ever-present threat, and the alien delicacy of its fragile nature. Her spiritual perceptions of this vast landscape were an integral part of her work, but her focus on metaphysics and gentle disposition made her a poor fit for the materialistic brand of masculine American modernism championed by the New York hegemony of the early 20th century, despite the bond of belief that should have tied her tightly to Peggy Guggenheim’s clan of esoterically-minded abstract painters like Mondrian and Kandinsky. Pelton was born in 1881 to Florence Tilton, who sparked an infamous scandal that wrecked…

John Sloan (1871-1951) was a founder of the Ashcan School with Robert Henri (1865-1929) and others. It was named such because that’s where critics thought their work belonged. Henri said, “There is only one reason for art in America, and that is that the people of America learn the means of expressing themselves in their own time and their own land.” Their depictions of gritty, immigrant and working-class life were counter to the decorous art of their contemporaries. Sloan’s The Haymarket, Sixth Avenue, 1907, was shown in 1908 in the only exhibition by a group known as The Eight which included Sloan, Henri, Everett Shinn, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, George Luks and William J. Glackens. The Brooklyn Museum notes, “The Haymarket was especially provocative because it showed…

The history of modern art is a story of cultural upheaval, political turmoil and mass emigration within the vast global artistic diaspora of the early 20th century. The American Modernist Movement and the Eastern European Exodus, an upcoming exhibition at J. Kenneth Fine Art, features artists who fled their homelands because of religious and political persecution amid the ongoing wars and conflicts of Europe. A broad grouping and diverse mix of people from various countries and cultural backgrounds fled from the yolk of oppression amid the decline of Imperial Russia and the emergence of the Russian Revolution. This exhibition focuses on three artists whose lineage is traced back to Eastern Europe: Norman Carton (1908-1980), Helen Gerardia (1903-1988), and Jacob Semiatin (1915-2003). Semiatin arrived in America in 1920 at age 5.…

As is clear in every issue of American Fine Art Magazine, the past is very much alive in the present. In terms of art, it’s more than alive, it’s growing. Even though the art we feature has been created by artists no longer with us, by no means are we dealing with a finite trove of treasures. In this issue, you will hear from multiple galleries and dealers committed to bringing artists overlooked during their lifetimes out of obscurity into the public eye to receive the recognition they deserve. In doing so, they continue to reinfuse the market with fresh, exceptional art for collectors—examples of which you will find in these pages. We are very proud to introduce the May/June issue of American Fine Art Magazine. The following pages are…

Diego Rivera’s America On view through July 31, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art presents Diego Rivera’s America, the first major exhibition focused solely on the iconic Mexican artist in more than two decades. The exhibition explores Rivera’s career through more than 130 works, including his drawings, easel paintings, frescoes and more. “The rare presentation reveals the broad range of Rivera’s creativity through a series of thematic sections that bring together more works from this period than have been seen together since the artist’s lifetime,” the museum notes. Diego Rivera’s America is co-organized by Crystal Bridges and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Collection-sharing partnership The result of a $2 million grant from the Art Bridges Foundation, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art will share works of art…

SUSAN MACDOWELL EAKINS (1851-1938) Old Fashioned Dress Susan Hannah Macdowell Eakins is not as well-known as her husband, the great American realist Thomas Eakins. Susan Macdowell stopped exhibiting when she and Thomas Eakins married in 1884 because she wanted to devote herself to his career. She only began painting professionally again after his death in 1916. Although Eakins regarded her as perhaps the best woman painter of the period, she subordinated her career to his and is only now getting the recognition she deserves. This work was painted in 1880 and was included in her 1973 retrospective. Thomas Colville Fine Art 111 Old Quarry Road • Guilford, CT 06437 (203) 453-2449 • tlc@thomascolville.com • www.thomascolville.com JESSIE HAZEL ARMS BOTKE (1883-1971) Flamingos and Lotus Jessie Hazel Arms Botke studied at the…

SUBSCRIBE TODAY to get the premier historic American fine art magazine in the country, and the only bi-monthly magazine that showcases the remarkable artwork from this era, as well as the galleries, museums and auction houses that support them in the art market. Need proof? The proof is in your hands. Flip through this stunning issue to find the most thorough coverage of the historic American Art genre through: » Previews of the most significant gallery shows, museum exhibitions, fine art fairs and auction sales.» Special genre sections to expand your collecting power.» Insights from industry experts.» 6 issues a year, each one presenting work by the most notable artists of the 19th and 20th centuries and practical means to add them to your collection. Join our huge community of…

Opening May 1 at Helicline Fine Art in New York City, is Antonio Petruccelli: Rediscovering a Modernist, an exhibition on the work of a prominent cover artist who contributed to many great publications. Petruccelli, who was active on the East Coast for more than 60 years, created 24 covers for Fortune magazine, four for the New Yorker, and dozens of other illustrations for Vanity Fair, Collier’s, Time/Life and even the U.S. Postal Service. Although Petruccelli worked right up until his death in 1994, the Helicline show will largely feature work from the 1930s through the 1960s, which was an important period of American illustration. Illustration, which has seen highs and lows within American art, has become increasingly more celebrated and collected in recent years, though that was not always the…

On May 25 in New York City, Bonhams will offer its seasonal American art sale featuring major works from many categories throughout the American art market, including Golden Age Illustration, landscapes and cityscapes from New York. One of the early favorites is Norman Rockwell’s 1954 work Me and My Pal: Fishing Raft. A small piece, measuring just 14 by 13 inches, is estimated at $500,000 to $700,000. Those estimates show how Rockwell’s market has strength amid continuous high sales at auction. Another illustrator represented in the sale is N.C. Wyeth, whose work A Man of a Certain Probity and Worth, Immortal and Natural will be available with estimates of $200,000 to $300,000. The 1936 work was originally created as a color illustration for the book Men of Concord by Henry…

Addison Rowe Gallery 229 E. Marcy Street Santa Fe, NM 87501 t: (505) 982-1533 addart@addisonrowe.com www.addisonrowe.art Debra Force Fine Art 13 E. 69th Street, Suite 4F New York, NY 10021 t: (212) 734-3636 info@debraforce.com www.debraforce.com Helicline Fine Art New York, NY By Appointment Only t: (212) 204-8833 hello@heliclinefineart.com www.heliclinefineart.com J. Kenneth Fine Art 668 N. Palm Canyon Drive Palm Springs, CA 92262 t: (802) 540-0267 jkennethfineart@gmail.com www.jkennethfineart.com Rehs Galleries 20 W. 55th Street New York, NY 10019 t: (212) 355-5710 info@rehs.com www.rehs.com Rubine Red Gallery 668 N. Palm Canyon Drive, Suite 102 Palm Springs, CA 92262 t: (760) 537-7665 jason@rubineredgallery.com www.rubineredgallery.com Vose Galleries 238 Newbury Street Boston, MA 02116 t: (617) 536-6176 info@vosegalleries.com www.vosegalleries.com…

Raymond Jonson (1891-1982) was first influenced by the modern art he saw at the Chicago hanging of the Armory Show in 1913 and several years later by Vasily Kandinsky’s book, The Art of Spiritual Harmony. Later, he came in contact with the ideas of Theosophy which taught “Behind everything seen or unseen there is an eternal, boundless, and immutable absolute Reality, which is beyond the range of human thought. Both matter and consciousness (or spirit) are the two polar aspects of this Reality.” Emil Bisttram (1895-1976) came to the U.S. from Hungary. For Bisttram, painting was a means for gaining spiritual insight. Also influenced by Theosophy, he wrote, “It is my conviction that art… is a means to unfold the consciousness and thereby bring it to envision and experience wider…

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art has reconfigured its display of European and American modernism in a fresh installation of the permanent collection that will be on view through the fall of 2023. “We’re always exploring new approaches to displaying our collections to engage visitors in new ways,” says the museum’s curator of American art, Erin Monroe. “What is exciting to me is having American modernist and surrealist artworks with European ones in the same space, in dialogue.” Monroe collaborated with the institution’s director, Matthew Hargraves, and curator of European art, Oliver Tostmann, on the project. Together, they took a thematic approach, with a focus on how artists responded to the ever-changing modern world from the 1910s to 1960s, a time of upheaval and uncertainty, as well as great creativity.…

The Dallas Museum of Art has announced two key curatorial appointments as part of a newly restructured curatorial and research department. Interim chief curator Nicole R. Myers (pictured) has been promoted to the inaugural position of chief curatorial and research officer. Anabelle Gambert-Jouan has been named the Lillian and James H. Clark Assistant Curator of European Art. Anne-Marie Russell was recently appointed executive director and CEO of the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. Russell joined the MFA in September of last year as interim executive director. Phoenix Art Museum has selected Giovana Aviles to serve as the museum’s inaugural Men’s Arts Council Curator of Engagement. The position is endowed by the Men’s Arts Council, a non-profit member organization of Valley philanthropists dedicated to supporting the museum’s community outreach programs…

Kitsch, Propaganda, and the American Avant-Garde by Michael J. Pearce (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, March 24, 2023. Hardcover, 405 pages. $134.95) What compelled you to write this book? MP: I wrote Kitsch, Propaganda, and the American Avant-Garde because I wanted to know why the acidic idea of kitsch was so pervasive in the hostile rhetoric that was aimed against representational painting and sculpture during the 20th century. According to theorists, kitsch art appealed to sentiment and sprang from popular taste unguided by critical elites who wished to use art to promote their ideas. Kitsch was sensual, seductive and spiritual. It was the antithesis of true art. Kitsch was fake, and evil, and manipulative. Kitsch was tied to representational art with a Gordian knot. How did the book change once you dug…

NEVADA MUSEUM OF ART 160 W. Liberty Street, Reno, NV 89501 • www.nevadaart.org What event (gallery show, museum exhibit, etc.) in the next few months are you looking forward to, and why? Since 2018, I have been working on an exhibition titled Adaline Kent: The Click of Authenticity, which is now on display at the Nevada Museum of Art. It explores the underrecognized contributions of the Bay Area artist Adaline Kent (1900-1957) who took great inspiration from the natural environment in her sculptures, works on paper and various other works. This will be the first retrospective of her work in about 60 years—viewers will have the opportunity to see approximately 90 objects in the show which have rarely been seen before. In conjunction with the exhibition, we also produced the…

For more than a century—going back to major milestones like the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870 and the first Armory Show in 1913—New York City has been a world-renowned mecca of art. This is true any time of the year but never more so than during American Art Week—a spring tradition when gallery shows, museum exhibitions, auctions and art fairs featuring historic American art take place simultaneously across the city. One of, if not the centerpiece of the events is The American Art Fair at Bohemian National Hall from May 13 to 16. Read about this annual fine art showcase and all the other art events dedicated to the genre at the heart of American Fine Art Magazine, in our extensive coverage of this year’s American…

May 13, 2 p.m. Some Old Curiosity Shops: Whistler, Commerce, And The Art Of Urban Change Speaker: David Park Curry, Independent Scholar; former Curator of American Art at the Freer Gallery of Art, The Denver Art Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Baltimore Museum of Art May 13, 4 p.m. Variations On A Theme: Joseph Stella’s Visionary Nature Speaker: Stephanie Heydt, Margaret and Terry Stent Curator of American Art High Museum of Art, Atlanta May 14, 2 p.m. The Painting Of Raymond Jonson: American Modernism From Chicago To Santa Fe Speaker: Herbert R. Hartel, Jr., Adjunct Associate Professor, Queens College, CUNY May 14, 4 p.m. Omissions From The Canon: Artistic Representations Of Industry Along The Hudson River Speaker: Annette Blaugrund, Former Director, National Academy Museum and School…

When Lincoln Glenn partners Douglas Gold and Eli Sterngass opened the gallery last year, the mission was to “champion artists who have been overlooked over time,” says Gold. “As art dealers, we were collecting these artists but the market has sort of left them behind.” The gallery has stayed on course with their mission by featuring a spectacular exhibition of six large-scale, monumental works by Alan Fenton (1927-2000)—widely recognized for his abstract or “nonobjective” paintings and drawings from the abstract expressionist movement in the 50s and 60s, but has somehow faded into obscurity. The exhibition planning began with Gold’s personal interest in the artist and as a collector of his work. After reaching out to Fenton’s family estate, the gallery soon realized “we were fortunate to find these works…,” Gold…

A solo exhibition of works by California modernist Edward Biberman marks the first ever show to focus exclusively on the artist’s architectural paintings and works on paper. More than 30 pieces will be on view, from the 1930s to ’80s, and includes early oils and studies from the period when Biberman completed murals for Depression Era public works projects, paintings from the post-war period and later works that capture the artist’s love of his adopted home of Los Angeles. “Biberman was an important modernist from the 1930s through his death in 1986. He is one of the rare American artists to work successfully in Philadelphia, Paris, New York and Los Angeles and he did so in a variety of different genres both pre-war and post-war,” says Chris Walther of CW…

Currently on view at the Brandywine Museum of Art is Andrew Wyeth: Home Places, featuring nearly 50 paintings and drawings of local buildings that inspired Wyeth over seven decades of his career. Drawn from the nearly 7,000-object Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, many of these pieces have never before been exhibited, offering a first glimpse at a significant treasure trove that will shed new light on the collaborative creative process of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth repeatedly depicted a small group of historic houses in the immediate vicinity of his hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. While others might have overlooked these weathered buildings that stood in defiance of the area’s commercial development, Wyeth found them an endless source of inspiration for an…

Pennsylvania-based Freeman’s is the oldest auction house in the country, contributing to the auction world and art world for more than 216 years. As such, the auction house holds numerous sales of fine art and antiquities throughout the year, with something every month for collectors to dive into. This June, Freeman’s is holding the spring/summer edition of their American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists sale. The auction includes fresh-to-market works by some of the biggest names in American art, including N.C. Wyeth, Daniel Garber, George William Sotter and Horace Pippin, to name a few. Among the highlights in the upcoming sale is Garber’s forest scene In a Wood, which has a presale estimate of $200,000 to $300,000. The oil painting, dated November 1932, features an autumn scene with a soft quality…

The Winter Show, the country’s longest-running art, antiques and design fair, wrapped up its 69th edition this January, with a major return to its longtime home at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. The show featured more than 68 exhibitors across 10 countries showing blue chip paintings, sculpture, antiquities, furniture and more. Among the fine art highlights in the 2023 show was Pennsylvania-based Avery Galleries, which sold a William Glackens oil from the 1920s titled Bouquet with Foxgloves, as well as William Trost Richards’ Salt Marshes, Atlantic City, from around 1886, and many others. “This was our first year exhibiting at The Winter Show and we were delighted by the success of our fair,” says Nicole Amoroso, managing director for Avery Galleries. “We met new clients and also reconnected…

Saturday, May 13 2pm Some Old Curiosity Shops: Whistler, Commerce, and the Art of Urban Change David Park Curry Independent Scholar 4pm Variations on a Theme: Joseph Stella's Visionary Nature Stephanie Heydt Margaret and Terry Stent Curator of American Art High Museum of Art, Atlanta Sunday, May 14 2pm The Painting of Raymond Jonson: American Modernism from Chicago to Santa Fe Herbert R. Hartel, Jr. Adjunct Associate Professor Queens College, CUNY 4pm Omissions from the Canon: Artistic Representations of Industry Along the Hudson River Annette Blaugrund Former Director of the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts Admission to the Fair and lectures is complimentary/lecture seating is on a first-come basis.…