Auction Highlights: African American Art — October 19, 2023

The October 19, 2023, sale of African American Art will feature exceptional modern and contemporary works of abstract and figurative art.

The top lot in the auction is Moon Madness, an important 1959 processional painting by Norman Lewis. It is one of a significant series of nocturnal compositions made by the artist in the late fifties.

Other sale highlights are two paintings from 1954. Hughie Lee-Smith’s Untitled (Two Young Men on a Beach) is an evocative oil painting that epitomizes the artist’s career-defining body of work of surreal landscapes from Detroit. 

Left: Sam Gilliam, Untitled, acrylic and metallic paint on draped polypropylene fabric, 1979. Estimate $150,000 to $250,000.

---

Another abstract highlight is a 1979 untitled draped canvas by Sam Gilliam, from the estate of his friend and collaborator Lou Stovall—this 90-inch-high expanse of saturated color is a stunning example of Gilliam’s innovative painting.

The auction also includes exceptional works on paper including Alma Thomas’s Trasendental, a large and colorful 1965 watercolor that was included in the artist’s first solo exhibition in a commercial gallery. Contemporary highlights include one of Simone Leigh’s signature cowrie shell forms with a dark gray glaze, and Samuel Levi Jones’s Construct of Colour Vision, 2018, an excellent example of his practice of assembling deconstructed books into grid-like compositions. The Levi Jones will be sold by the estate of George T. Wein to benefit the Newport Festivals Foundation, Inc.

Get Notifications for Auction Day