NEW YORK, NY.- Swann Galleries African American Art department will present Abstract Beauty: The Collection of Patricia Scipio-Brim on Thursday, February 6. With over 80 artworks from the estate, this auction showcases postwar and contemporary Black art focusing on abstraction. It includes works by many important African American artists, including Charles Alston, McArthur Binion, Ed Clark, Beauford Delaney, Norman Lewis, Richard Mayhew, Alma Thomas and Jack Whitten. The auction will also feature a significant group of paintings by Sir Frank Bowling, OBE RA, the British painter born in British Guiana.

Scipio-Brim was a successful New York lawyer who privately cultivated her practice of collecting over decades: visiting artist’s studios, museums, galleries and auctions, acquiring work by artists long before they reached their current acclaim. This collection demonstrates both her intellect and genuine passion for the arts.

Amongst many great examples of postwar abstraction, Alma Thomas’s Untitled, 1971, work from her Atmospheric Effect series is a standout ($60,000-90,000). Each composition in this series depicts spectral bands of color inspired by photography published by NASA. They were first exhibited in her important 1970 solo exhibition “Alma Thomas: Earth and Space Paintings” at the Franz Bader Gallery, Washington DC, and are highly prized by collectors today. Other postwar works include a 1961 watercolor-and-gouache on paper by Beauford Delaney, executed during his time living in the Clamart neighborhood of Paris in the late 1960s ($30,000-40,000); Norman Lewis’s A Certain Total from 1951 ($20,000-30,000); and double portrait from Jack Whitten, completed in 1964 ($15,000-25,000).

In contemporary art, Patricia Scipio-Brim had a particular interest in the inventive abstractions of Frank Bowling—owning several of his paintings. One of the auction highlights is Looking for Carmen, 2006 ($60,000-90,000). This richly multi-layered painting is a fine example of Bowling’s collaged canvases from the 1990s and early 2000s. The artist’s composition balances daring paint passages and surfaces with flair, all atop his signature support of colorful collaged canvas. Further works by Bowling include Profile, acrylic on canvas with marouflage, 2013 ($50,000-75,000), and Ben Woodick, acrylic and acrylic gel on canvas, 2002 ($25,000-35,000). Additional contemporary artworks in the collection are from Faith Ringgold, Ann Tanksley, Gregory Coates, Tomashi Jackson, and Christine Neptune.