Contemporary Influence
Works from throughout the Southwest produce strong results November 11 at the Santa Fe Art Auction
Works from throughout the Southwest produce strong results November 11 at the Santa Fe Art Auction
The Santa Fe Art Auction closed its 2017 sale on November 11 with $1.96 million in sales and an 86 percent sell-through rate. The auction, which featured a wide variety of Western art, drew special attention to modernist works from New Mexico, which was a bastion of contemporary influence for artists in the early- and mid-20th century.
Top lots included Georgia O’keeffe’s No. 36 – Special (Nicotine Flower) (est. $300/500,000) that sold for $351,000; John Sloan’s East at Sunset, Camino Monte Sol (est. $80/120,000) that sold for $81,900; and Emil Bisttram’s Red Rain
(est. $40/60,000) that sold for $70,200. Other top modernist artists reprented in the sale include Doel Reed,andrew Dasburg,
Josef Bakos,willard Nash, Fremont Ellis, B.J.O. Nordfeldt, Gene Kloss, Gustave Baumann, Kenneth Adams and many others. Tying the O’keeffe for the top lot was Albert Bierstadt’s landscape Source of the Snake River, estimated at $350,000 to $550,000, that sold for $351,000. Bierstadt took two significant trips west in 1859 and 1863, both of which greatly influenced his artwork that would go on to be the pinnacle of American landscape painting.
Raymond Jonson had two pieces among the top lots: The Night, Chicago (est. $80/120,000) that sold for $163,800, setting a new artist world record; and Untitled
(New Mexico Vista) (est. $60/100,000) that sold for $117,000. Both works are very different: Chicago shows a glowing cityscape with towering skyscrapers and beacons of light shooting diagonally into the night sky, and the New Mexico scene shows a slightly abstracted landscape with adobe walls and buildings nestled in the soft curves of desert hills. Among the top Western lots were Carl Oscar Borg’s Navajo Herding Horses (est. $100/150,000) that sold for $81,900; Joseph Henry Sharp’s Lorenzo Martinez – Taos (“Bull Breath”) (est. $50/70,000) that sold for $46,800; and E. Martin Hennings’ In Taos Canyon (est. $30/50,000), which closed at $58,500.The Hennings piece came with a colorful history:“…it was donated to Goodwill of the Heartland in Iowa. They, in turn brought it to us and we had it extensively cleaned and conserved, including removing a foam core backing on which it had been affixed, re-stretching and lining, and re-framing,” says Jenna Kloeppel, acting director of the Santa Fe Art Auction. “The artwork was a crowd favorite at the sale, with competitive in-house and telephone bidding, and it hammered at $58,500, with consignor funds, of course, going back to Goodwill of the Heartland to support their philanthropic mission.” Kloeppel adds that the auction brought a lot of attention to artwork of the West. “Santa Fe Art Auction featured an impressive variety of artworks highlighting the enduring artistic and cultural traditions of the American Southwest,” she says. “A noticeably full house was evident at the auction, which was hosted at Peters Projects in Santa Fe, and robust telephone, online and absentee bidding rounded out lively in-house bidding activity.”