Josef Albers, Ten Variants, 1966. Estimate $15,000 - 20,000.
Robert Indiana
Robert Indiana, Polygons, 1975. Estimate $15,000 - 20,000.
Robert Indiana was a central figure in the Pop art movement who, like his contemporary James Rosenquist, found inspiration in the everyday lettering, figures, and shapes from billboards, advertisements, and road signs. Today he is perhaps best known for his iconic LOVE series, which foregrounded the word, its letters, and its concept as both a command and a subject.
Always concerned with this kind of monumental repetition, Indiana began working with numbers in the 1960s. For Indiana, the figure-fixation started in childhood, as he famously moved 21 times by the time he turned 17, resulting in a swirl of highway routes, addresses, and zip-codes. He also associated each number (and color, for that matter) with a stage of life, from birth to adolescence to death. “Each one,” Indiana said, “[is] loaded with multiple references and significances.”
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg, 5:29 Bay Shore, 1981. Estimate $7,000 - 10,000.
A relentless innovator, Robert Rauschenberg explored a wide array of techniques and styles, always looking to recalibrate the mediums with which he worked. From Abstract Expressionism onward, Rauschenberg was firmly on the avant-garde, incorporating painting, found objects, photography, image transfer, and printing into his oeuvre. In the 1950s and 1960s, found images became central to his work, which put forth art and life as contiguous and continuous concepts. As he explained, “I think a picture is more like the real world when it’s made out of the real world.”
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell, Untitled (E. & B. 182), 1975. Estimate $2,000 - 3,000.
One of the youngest proponents of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Robert Motherwell rose to critical acclaim with his first solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery in 1944. Not only was Motherwell one of the major practicing Abstract Expressionist artists, he was, in fact, the main intellectual driving force within the movement—corralling fellow New York painters such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hoffman and William Baziotes into his circle. During an over five-decade-long career, Motherwell created a large and powerful body of varied work that includes paintings, drawings, prints and collages. Motherwell's work is most generally characterized by simple shapes, broad color contrasts and a dynamic interplay between restrained and gestural brushstrokes. Above all, it demonstrates his approach to art-making as a response to the complexity of lived, and importantly felt, experience.
Josef Albers
Josef Albers, Ten Variants, 1966. Estimate $15,000 - 20,000.
Josef Albers was a German-American artist and educator, best known for his series Homage to the Square. His rigid, geometric works focus on the interplay of color and shape, and Albers is considered one of the fathers of both Minimalism and Conceptual Art.
In addition to his own practice, Albers was an important educator, beginning his career as an educator at the famous Bauhaus in 1922, first as a stained glass instructor and then as a full professor in 1925. Working at the Bauhaus brought Albers into contact with many other famous artists of the period, including Kandinsky and Klee. When the Nazis forced the Bauhaus’ closure in 1933, Albers left Germany and settled permanently in the United States. For ten years, Albers (and his wife, fellow artist Anni Albers) taught at Black Mountain College, a progressive school in North Carolina. Between his time there and later at Yale University, Albers taught a number significant artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Eva Hesse, and Ruth Asawa.
Jim Dine
Jim Dine, Plane and Brace, 1962. Estimate $2,000 - 4,000.
There's a considerable chance that any given piece of art with a heart has been made by Jim Dine. The artist has been prolific in his 60-plus years of producing works, from large-scale Pop-inflected paintings to emotive and lush collaged works-on-paper. Even while working within a childlike vocabulary, Dine has often been considered alongside rougher painters like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, and has surprised critics and audiences by flexing his muscles as an original generator of performance art "Happenings" or towering series of sculptures.
Discover More from Gallery One >
Recommended Reading
Paris in West Hollywood: The Blake Byrne Collection >
Specialist Picks: Unlikely Pairings, From Dürer to Richter >