Auctions offer a moment where the sometimes-incalculable significance of an object is quantified. The price is reached through collaboration: specialists, consignors, the market, and finally, bidders convene in the room,…
The top lot at our recent auction, Ascension: A Century of African-American Fine Art was Barkley Hendricks’s Steve, an iconic painting that embodies the look and attitude that Hendricks famously captured…
On Saturday, February 21 the South Side Community Arts Center in Chicago will host an event celebrating the work of renowned artist and printmaker Eldzier Cortor. Swann’s own Nigel Freeman will…
Dr. Amalia Amaki, noted art historian and artist, wrote the catalogue introduction for The Richard A. Long Collection of African-American Art. Dr. Amaki, a native Atlantan, received her Ph.D in…
This Untitled watercolor from Alma Thomas’s Space Series, circa 1969-72, is featured in our October 9 auction. Alma Woodsey Thomas, abstract painter and art educator, was born on this…
Martha’s Vineyard, an affluent summer colony located on an island south of Cape Cod, has long attracted African American artists. Lois Mailou Jones’s oil on canvas, Monday at Menemsha,…
Last week Swann Galleries had the pleasure of hosting an artist talk with Barkley L. Hendricks, whose “unique work resides at the nexus of American realism and post-modernism, a space…
Swann Galleries is pleased to offer the first significant work by assemblage artist Noah Purifoy to come to auction in our upcoming sale of African-American Fine Art titled The Shape of Things…
On June 10, Swann will hold our third African-American Fine Art sale of the 2013-14 auction season. The Shape of Things to Come focuses on art made in the 1960s…
Swann Galleries is putting the final touches on our catalogue for the June 10 auction of African-American Fine Art we have titled The Shape of Things to Come, which focuses…
Alaina McEachin, of Swann’s African-American Fine Art Department, writes about the catalogue cover image for the upcoming auction Shadows Uplifted: The Rise of African-American Art. The cover for our February…
The image chosen for the cover of Swann’s upcoming sale Point of Departure: Postwar African-American Fine Art is a circa 1957 Untitled oil on canvas by Norman Lewis. The previously unrecorded painting was acquired…
Figurative artists Eldzier Cortor, Hughie Lee-Smith and Charles White stayed true to their roots in social realism as their work evolved in the post-war decades. Unlike contemporaries Charles Alston, Norman…
One standout exhibition to see this fall is the first-ever New York City survey of work by Robert S. Duncanson. The exhibition, called Robert S. Duncanson: Antebellum African American Artist,…
I must sadly note the passing of Elizabeth Catlett on April 2 in her home Cuernavaca, Mexico, as widely reported yesterday. She will be remembered as one of the great…
Tomorrow’s auction of African-American Fine Art offers an incredibly powerful drawing by Charles White, J’Accuse! No. 10 (Negro Woman). The circular charcoal drawing depicting the faces of several African-American women…
Swann’s February 16 auction of African-American Fine Art will feature the first painting by celebrated artist William T. Williams to come to auction. The monumental 1971 acrylic on canvas, titled…
A circa 1918 Untitled (Dusk Scene of a Flooded River and Nearby Town) oil on cardstock by Tanner brought $33,600 in Swann’s October 8, 2009 auction Later this month, the Pennsylvania Academy of…
Yesterday’s auction of African-American Fine Art saw heated bidding from dealers, collectors and institutions, resulting in strong prices for works by modern and contemporary artists. Charles White’s powerful drawing of…
Across the U.S. this fall, a bevy of museum shows related to the impressive works in Thursday’s African-American Fine Art auction have opened. Hale Woodruff, Rape of Europa, oil on canvas, circa…
An email can get lost in your inbox, but a hand-written letter can last forever. And, you might want to save the envelope, too, if it has one of the…
If your summer travels take you to the Boston area, be sure to visit the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), which has added a handful of works to their collection via…
Center: Jackie Sha-La-La (Jackie Cameron), oil and acrylic on canvas, 1975. Sold for $48,000 on February 23, 2010. The inimitable Barkley L. Hendricks might have birthed the cool back…
After a group of Chicago artists, including Barbara Jones-Hogu, Carolyn Mims Lawrence and Wadsworth Jarrell, worked together on a mural called The Wall of Respect, they set out to establish…
Our upcoming preview will be the first time Elizabeth Catlett’s 1967 sculpture, Untitled (Standing African-American Woman), will be on public exhibition in the United States. The nearly four-foot high sculpture, which had been in a…
Romare Bearden, Tidings, collage of various papers and mixed media, circa 1973. Estimate: $30,000 to $50,000. Romare Bearden is undoubtedly one of America’s greatest artists. Today, his collages are viewed…
James Little, The Chinese Massacre, 1977. Estimate: $10,000 to $15,000. In Swann’s February 17th African-American Fine Art auction, James Little’s oil on canvas, The Chinese Massacre, 1977, is his first…
Loïs Mailou Jones, whose work appears in tomorrow’s African-American Fine Art auction, is the subject of a major retrospective at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington,…
Our October 7th African-American Fine Art auction features two exceptional works of folk art, a type of art not typically included in these sales. North Carolina artists William Edmondson and…
Contemporary African-American artist David Hammons is known for his body prints and assemblages of found objects, such as his fly swatter. His oversize version of an African-American flag hangs outside the Studio…
Bob Thompson stood apart from most of his contemporaries in the early 1960s. On one hand, he was the epitome of a New York bohemian artist working in a Clinton…
Among the top lots at Tuesday’s auction of African-American Fine Art was a unique Fly Swatter created in 1992 by contemporary artist David Hammons, which sold for $66,000 to a…
Among the highlights of our 15th annual auction of Printed & Manuscript African Americana is an incredible archive comprising James Amos Porter’s African-American Art History Reference materials. The lot contains…
The image that graces the cover of the auction catalogue for Swann Galleries’ sale of African-American Fine Art on Thursday, October 8 is John Biggers’s powerful 1987 oil and acrylic…
Hip, cool and stylish men and women provide the foundation for Barkley L. Hendricks’ first retrospective exhibition. After successful runs at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the…
Our auction of African-American Fine Art on October 8th will feature the Richard L. Brown painting Mt. Monadnock, 1911 (above), which is expected to sell between $5,000 and $7,000. A…
Our October 8th African-American Fine Art auction marks the first time that early photographer Cornelius Marion Battey’s photographic portraits will come to auction. These photographs were recently discovered in the…
