Contemporary, Outsider, Folk, and Fine Art Auction

This season's December 6th Art auction features so much great material there isn't enough time or space to describe how exciting this is for us at Potter & Potter. This time out we'll have a gallery reception on Saturday afternoon December 2nd, 1 – 4 PM, with a gallery talk at 2PM moderated by yours truly. I'll speak about curating a collection at auction and talk about some amazing and rare objects. Please RSVP to [email protected] or call 773-472-1442 if you'd like to attend the reception.

If you have any questions about how it works or anything else feel free to call or email me [email protected] or 773-472-1442.

More info about the auction below...

At 670 lots it's spread out over a full day starting with Outsider and Folk Art, merging into some great Ethnographic material. There will be multiple lots by Purvis Young, Howard Finster, Lee Godie, William Dawson, Mr. I, Mose Tolliver, Jimmy Lee Sudduth and many others. In Folk Art we have a rare piece of Tavern Folk Art. A mechanized life size carved and polychromed bean bag toss figure where you can win a free beer. Carnival, gambling, masonic, decoys, carvings, quilts with many other categories round out Folk Art.

Starting our Post War Contemporary Art session we have 2 important African American artists, Elizabeth Catlett and Albert Wells. Catlett has 2 prints from the 1989 series, I am the Black Woman (first appearing in the 1947 series, I Am the Negro Woman). Albert Wells has multiple paintings, and a group of 5 sketchbooks with approximately 750 sketches within. One sketchbook has the name and New York address of Wells' teacher, famed painter Hale Woodruff (American, 1900-1980). Following his release from the military in December 1945, Wells moved to Chicago, Illinois, and little is known about his artistic career after this point. He remained there and worked as a teacher in the public school system before his death in 2001.

Continuing with contemporary art, Chicago is well represented with lots from Leroy Neiman, Robert Middaugh, Seymour Rosofsky, Riva Lehrer, Lynda Barry, Iris Adler, and Richard Loving. Moving on we have a rare early Paul Jenkins abstraction from 1958, and two works by the fabulous figurative painter, Ann Gale. For the art and dog lovers, we offer 2 Great Dane anthropormorphized formal portraits by Belgian artist Thierry Poncelet.

In photography beloved SAIC professor Karen Savage has 3 unique dress photograms. Aaron Siskind has 5 classic black and white works. The Siskind's transition into a fantastic black and white Martin Puryear linoleum cut. His work doesn't come to auction often. Many usual suspects for prints: Tony Fitzpatrick, Ed Paschke, Keith Haring, Takashi Murakami, Peter Max, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Egon Schiele, Lucio Fontana and we'll stop now.

In sculpture we'll feature welded modernist sculpture by James Bearden. Bearden has much in common with Chrome bumper artist John Kearney who has two tabletop animals, and Lewis Tardy has a futurist found object motorcycle rider that is one of the highlights of the auction. There are many sculptures by vernacular and unknown artists and the best example is a life-size outdoor bronze whose subject is Lu Xun, who authored Diary of a Madman. The seated bronze portrait is also a classic pose of the subject that many of us already know.

In the Fine Art category we have over 60 works from an Chicago based Italian collector with some well-known artists along with many genres with landscape, still life and portraiture being the subjects that were well collected. Moving forward in time we have a novel illustrative oil on paper of boys playing marbles by Chicago artist Karl Buehr. And the last set of works to mention are 9 preparatory drawings by printmaker and muralist, Howard Cook. These are direct studies for a mural that exists at the Hampden County Courthouse in Springfield, Massachusetts.