MOUNT KISCO, NY.- The Benefit Shop Foundation, Inc. will present its first-ever single-estate auction on Wednesday, Aug. 5 at 10 am, featuring the estate of the late artist Estelle Goodman (1930-2007), who lived in an iconic building in Manhattan’s Central Park West for decades. The apartment containing her own art and artwork she collected has been locked and unoccupied until now.
“Walking into her grand apartment in The Majestic was a bit like stepping into a time capsule,” said Pam Stone, owner and founder of the auction house. “The apartment was just as she left it and there were many examples of her bronze sculptures as well as fine paintings by several of her artist contemporaries, which she collected.”
Known for her figural sculptures accentuating the human form, Goodman was a leading abstract sculptor and painter in her day. Born in New York City, she graduated from Barnard College and was a member of the Artist-Craftsmen of New York. “What I love about her pieces is they are so strong and have such a reverence for the human being. And her wicked sense of humor comes through,” said her niece Loreen Arbus in an online interview with Mansion Global.
In this auction, about 100 fresh-to-the-market artworks on offer here are a trove of modernist, expressionist, abstract and midcentury paintings and sculptures. The sale also includes the content of her estate and items she lived with such as a midcentury desk from the Paul McCobb “Calvin” series ($500-700) having a square tube brass base/support under a single drawer and two slide-out extensions. The desk is topped by a lively grained piece of black and white marble and measures 54 by 28 by 29½ inches. Also on offer are a Steinway Baby Grand piano, an antique French console table and a pair of period bronze lamps.
Among her abstract figural bronze sculptures is one depicting a man and a woman ($400-600), their backs to one another yet connected by a figurative representation of communication in the form of a flowing ribbon between their mouths. It measures 18¼ by 8¾ by 5½ inches.
Other works by Goodman include “Prophetique,” a large abstract figural bronze sculpture ($400-600) of a nude woman with flowing hair holding a bird with flowing tail feathers in her hand. “Presented as a figurative caregiver, the woman has elongated facial features that are reminiscent of Modigliani while her form embodies the essence of Giacometti,” Stone said. The bronze measures 7½ by 30¼ by 6¾ inches.
Male figures are well represented, led by a figural abstract Modernist plaster bust of a man ($200-400) having flowing hair, beard and cap, 12¼ by 7½ by 7½ inches; and a well-sculpted man in half-bust form ($300-500), having strong and powerful features.
Several of Goodman’s wall plaques will cross the block, including a figural Modernist abstract sculpture/wall plaque of four people in various states of repose, dated 1961, 12 by 10 by 1¾ inches.
Besides being an artist, Goodman was an avid collector, especially works by midcentury artists. Rounding out the auction will be a mixed media abstract oil painting ($150-250). The fantasy landscape style painting has figures, birds and serpents swirling around center designs and measures 23¾ by 35¾ inches.
