Sotheby's unveils highlights from its October Prints & Photographs Auctions
George Bellows' A Stag at Sharkey's. Courtesy Sotheby's.
NEW YORK, NY.—
Sotheby’s Prints & Photographs Department unveils highlights from its upcoming New York auctions, bringing together an exceptional range of works across both mediums spanning three centuries. Leading the Photographs offerings this season is an impressive selection of 20th-century works, including an early print of Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, Edward Steichen’s atmospheric portrait of Thérèse Duncan on the Acropolis, and Irving Penn’s celebrated representations of working people from his Small Trades series.
Among the noteworthy prints on offer are Andy Warhol’s Cowboys and Indians portfolio from the Beverly Grossman Collection, Cy Twombly’s Roman Notes from the Collection of Anne and Stuart Robinowitz, Pablo Picasso’s celebrated linocut Buste de femme d’après Cranach le Jeune, and George Bellows’ heralded A Stag at Sharkey’s. Together, these works highlight the breadth of printmaking, from Picasso’s exploration of art-historical imagery to Bellows’ dynamic depiction of a boxing match.
The live and online Prints & Photographs sales offer a sweeping look at the possibilities of the printed image, bringing together works that have become enduring icons of visual history alongside examples that demonstrate the ways artists have transformed the medium through experimentation and innovation. Works will be on public view at Sotheby’s Breuer from 2–7 October.
PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS PART I
The live sale brings together a strong selection of photography and printmaking, with several important works that illuminate the changing role of the photograph across the 20th century.
Among the most significant offerings is Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (est. $100,000–150,000), an exceptionally early print of one of the most recognizable photographs in the history of the medium. Lange made the photograph in March 1936 while documenting migrant farm workers in California for the Resettlement Administration. The image of Florence Owens Thompson and her children would soon become an enduring symbol of hardship during the Great Depression, but the photograph on offer captures the image at a particularly early moment in its history. Executed in 1936 and likely printed between 1936 and 1937, the work is appearing at auction for the first time. It retains Lange’s early Resettlement Administration credit stamp, as well as Thompson’s thumb in the lower right corner, a distinctive detail that was subsequently removed from later printings.
In Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Radio City Music Hall, New York City (est. $200,000–300,000), a single long exposure compresses an entire film into one luminous frame, transforming hours of movement into an otherworldly still image. The Art Deco architecture frames moviegoers as ghostly figures. Executed in 1978, the work is number one from an edition of five and has never before been offered at auction in this impressive, large format. One of the most iconic photographs from Sugimoto’s celebrated Theatres series, it exemplifies his use of black-and-white film, analog processes and extended exposures to create images that blur the boundaries between photography, cinema and memory.
Building on the success of Sotheby’s offering of Irving Penn’s Small Trades photographs in April, the present sale includes another strong offering from one of the defining portrait series of the postwar period. Photographed in Paris, London and New York between 1950 and 1951 for Vogue, the series turned Penn’s studio camera away from the fashion world and toward the people whose trades and uniforms formed part of everyday city life.
Penn photographed each subject full-length against his characteristically spare backdrop, stripping away their surroundings and allowing their clothing, tools and bearing to tell the story. The approach gave a London chimney sweep or New York laborer the same formal attention that Penn brought to his fashion subjects. Selections from the series were published in the French, British and American editions of Vogue in 1951, and this year marks the 75th anniversary of that first publication. Among Sotheby’s offerings is Vitrier, Paris (est. $60,000–90,000), depicting a Parisian glazier carrying a distinctive wooden backpack loaded with panes of uncut glass.
Highlights from the selection of prints include remarkable examples by leading 20th-century artists. Pablo Picasso’s exceptional Buste de femme d’après Cranach le Jeune (est. $500,000 - 700,000), his first significant linocut and a triumph of complexity, demonstrates the extraordinary sense of depth and volume that can be achieved in printmaking.
Andy Warhol’s 1986 portfolio Cowboys and Indians (est. $700,000–1 million) presents important American figures and symbolic objects in one of the artist's final print publications. Once again, Warhol reimagines familiar popular imagery, juxtaposing recognizable subjects such as John Wayne, Geronimo and the Buffalo Head Nickel, with the underlying cultural influences that shaped the mythology of the American West.
Cy Twombly’s Roman Notes (est. $600,000-900,000) recalls the artist’s celebrated "chalkboard" aesthetic, with its gestural scribbles rendered in ethereal blue tones. The six sheets framed together form the largest of Twombly’s prints, a monumental example of an artist utilizing the print medium to explore a theme often seen in his unique work.
George Bellows' A Stag at Sharkey's (est. $70,000 - 100,000) captures two boxers mid-fight, harnessing the immediacy and visual power of action through lithography.
Minimalism is well represented by Donald Judd’s Untitled portfolio (est. $250,000-350,000), comprising ten woodcuts in rich cadmium red, alongside Untitled (Turquoise), (est. $80,000-120,000), a sleek anodized aluminum multiple. Both works exemplify Judd’s ability to balance arresting visuals with spare execution.
PRINTS PART II
Prints Part II Including Picasso Ceramics offers a broad survey of printmaking from the 19th century to the present, bringing together works by some of the most influential artists to have embraced the medium.
Modern works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse are presented alongside postwar and contemporary prints by Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, among others. Together, the selection highlights the versatility of printmaking, through artists’ experimentation with color, repetition, scale and form, while making their work accessible to a wider audience. With estimates ranging from $1,000 to over $100,000, the sale offers opportunities to explore printmaking across generations and collecting levels.
Among the highlights is a group of twelve works from Between Memory and Invention: The Collection of Robert A.M. Stern. The celebrated New York architect’s collection, which focused on Pop Art, includes works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns.
PHOTOGRAPHS PART II
Photographs Part II traces the development of photography from the 19th century to today, bringing together works by Ansel Adams, Helmut Newton, Robert Mapplethorpe, Francesca Woodman, Taryn Simon and William Eggleston, among others. The sale includes Grit & Grace: Photographs from the Nelson Brothers Collection, a significant group of documentary and photojournalistic images that reflects the power of photography to record people, places and moments of social history. The selection is complemented by Lillian Bassman: Elegance in Light, 1949–1996, which explores the highly distinctive visual language of one of the 20th century’s most innovative fashion photographers.
Bassman was known for treating the darkroom almost as an artist’s studio. Rather than simply recording her subjects, she manipulated her negatives and prints through cropping, toning, bleaching and other techniques, often using gauzes and tissues to alter the image. The resulting photographs blur the line between photography and abstraction, transforming fashion portraits into atmospheric, dreamlike compositions. Among the highlights is Margie Cato (Test Shoot), New York (est. $12,000–18,000), an evocative example of Bassman’s distinctive approach. The photograph demonstrates her ability to strip away extraneous detail, using light, shadow and texture to create an image with the refined, graphic quality of a fashion illustration.
Also featured is Laurie Simmons’ Girl Vent Press Shots (est. $40,000–60,000), a playful and unsettling example of the artist’s exploration of domestic imagery, constructed worlds and the representation of women. The work has previously been exhibited at the San Jose Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
