Prints are at the ‘art’ of auction
ASPECTACULAR collection of signed limited edition Beryl Cook prints are to go under the hammer in a two-day auction in Scunthorpe on April 5 and 6. The collection includes some of the most famous of the of the selftaught artist’s comic depictions of hen nights, girls on the town, life in the pub, dancers, drag acts and the rest, pictures that, to the bemusement of the Art Establishment, rocketed Cook to the status of national treasure.
Auctioneer Paul Potter said: “It’s an unusually good collection of Cook prints that was amassed by a North Lincolnshire fan over a number of years.
“It extends to 15 of the 40 signed limited edition prints that were issued between the first in 1977 and Cook’s death in 2008.
“We have one of the most famous of her images, Girls in a Taxi, a group of young women getting into a cab during a night out in Plymouth.
“The print is number 228 of a limited edition of 300 that was published in 1980.
“It is now classified as ‘very rare’ and tends to make into four figures at auction”.
Paul added: “While Cook’s is primarily regarded as a recorder of ordinary life in the South West of England, she did also travel abroad, carrying the cards in her handbag that she used to quickly sketch the things that she observed.
“Those trips resulted in pictures like ‘Tango in Bar Sur,’ a couple dancing in a Buenos Aires bar.”
“The original painting sold a few years back for $27,000 (£21,000).
“Fortunately our signed print, number 418 of a limited edition of 650 published in 1993, is expected to go for a bit less, something in the £200 to £500 range”.
The auction at the Potters Auction Saleroom in Scunthorpe also includes an original painting by the great Ukrainian-born architect and artist Anatole Krasnyanski (1930-2023), a man who was said to have escaped
from the Soviet Union to America in the 1970s “with little more than the paintbrushes hidden in his boots.”
In the United States Krasnyanski achieved success on multiple artistic fronts, not least in the film industry, as a set designer for Universal Studios on movies such as the Blues Brothers and Battlestar Galactica.
The Krasnyanski painting going under the hammer is Rostov Kremlin, a water and acrylic work dated 1996 that was later used to produce a limited edition serigraph (print) two years later.
■■The catalogue for the auction on April 5 and 6 is online at www.pottersauction.co.uk