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Dorothy and Eugene Prakapas, Prakapas Gallery, 1970s. Phillips is honored to present a selection of artwork from the collection of pioneering gallerists Eugene and Dorothy Prakapas. Proceeds from their outstanding collection will benefit the Eugene and Dorothy Prakapas Scholarship Fund at Yale University in memory of Thomas C. Mendenhall. Gene’s attendance at Yale in 1949 was made possible by a scholarship, and it was his and Dorothy’s intent that the sale of artwork from their estate would support scholars of the future.
Gene (1932-2011) and Dorothy (1928-2022) founded Prakapas Gallery at 19 East 71st Street, New York City, in 1976. The gallery quickly became known for its adventurous curatorial approach and for showing a diverse range of artists and media. The couple set a demanding pace for themselves, mounting a new exhibition every four weeks, and keeping an ever-changing array of painting, photography, and works-on-paper on the gallery walls. Photography, especially work connected to the Bauhaus, was a particular interest of the Prakapases, and the broad theme of European Modernism threaded its way through many of their shows. Operating on a shoestring budget, the couple sought out little-known artists and underrepresented aspects of well-known artists’ oeuvres for their exhibitions. Gallery favorites included László Moholy-Nagy, Fernand Léger, Willi Baumeister, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Werner Mantz, among many others.
[Left] Dorothy Prakapas, Prakapas Gallery, 1970s.
[Right] Eugene Prakapas with photographer Arthur Rothstein, Prakapas Gallery, 1978.Both Gene and Dorothy came to the art world after having pursued successful careers in other arenas. Gene worked in publishing after graduating Yale, served in the Navy, and later pursued graduate studies at Oxford, which he attended on a Fulbright scholarship. Dorothy was educated at City University of New York and the Fashion Institute of Technology and worked in the fashion industry. Together, they made Prakapas Gallery into a mecca for collectors on the hunt for material that could not be found elsewhere, the esoteric and the avant-garde across all media, selected and contextualized with intelligence and warmth.
“Galleries that are powered by a completely idiosyncratic taste and with no regard for current fashion do not always live long. So it is good to see from their 10th anniversary miscellany that Eugene and Dorothy Prakapas are just as quirky as ever they were.”
—John RussellA gem of the Prakapas collection, Fernand Léger’s Composition à l’échequier, 1926, provides a look into the key characteristics of the artist’s oeuvre. Masterfully using color and shading to create a three-dimensional space within an otherwise flat composition, Léger evokes the tenets of his practice during the interwar period – harmony and balance. Paring objects such as the checkerboard and gear down to their most essential elements, the artist showcases his association with Purism, a rebellion against Cubism, at its finest, and his idiosyncratic means of arranging objects and colors within space. Before the Prakapases acquired the work in the 1990s, the present work was notably in the collection of famed British art historian and collector Douglas Cooper.
“I dispersed my objects in space and kept them all together while at the same time making them radiate out from the surface of the picture.”
—Fernand LégerFollowing World War I, artists were struggling to forge a new path forward. For Léger, this resulted in a preoccupation with creating compositions that emphasized a harmonious balance, mirroring a gradual return to order in both art and society. It was at this point when the artist began to embrace a Purist style of rendering his figures and objects – stripping them of their decorative elements and leaving them with only their most essential colors and forms. This would result in the removal of objects from their conventional settings, allowing the artist to redefine the relationships between them; as noted by the artist, “I dispersed my objects in space and kept them all together while at the same time making them radiate out from the surface of the picture. A tricky interplay of harmonies and rhythms made up of background and surface colors, guidelines, distances, and oppositions.”i Composition à l’échequier is almost collage-like, with the checkerboard and mechanical elements appearing to be laid over the background. Experimenting with space in a novel way, Léger juxtaposes thick black lines with vibrant colors to create a balanced, harmonious examination into space, color and form.
i Fernand Léger, quoted in Werner Schmalenbach, Fernand Léger, New York, 1976, p. 32.
來源
倫敦和阿吉利耶Douglas Cooper收藏
紐約，佳士得，1992 年 5 月 11 日，拍品編號 41
紐約Prakapas畫廊（購自上述拍賣）
紐約Eugene與Dorothy Prakapas伉儷收藏
現藏者繼承自上述來源過往展覽
Kunstmuseum Basel; London, The Tate Gallery; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Douglas Cooper und die meister des Kubismus, November 22, 1987–July 1988, no. 43, pp. 121, 126–127, 208 (illustrated, p. 126)
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Picasso, Braque, Gris, Léger: Douglas Cooper Collecting Cubism, October 14–December 30, 1990, no. 43, p. 62
Eugene與Dorothy Prakapas伉儷遺產管理委員會收藏
124
《棋盤構圖》
款識：F.L. 26（右下方）
水墨 水粉 鉛筆 紙本
19 x 16 5/8 英吋（48.3 x 42.2 公分）
1926年作，此作附藝術家委員會所發之保證書。
估價
$250,000 - 350,000
Annie Dolan
日間拍賣（上午部分）拍賣主管暨專家
212 940 1288
adolan@phillips.com
現代及當代藝術日間拍賣(上午部分)
紐約拍賣 2024年5月15日
117
此拍品已不再提供買賣。
142
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158
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175
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