One of the aspects that I love most about working at an auction house is the daily chance of unexpected objects or artworks being presented. This unpredictability keeps you on…
The Thursday, March 6 auction of 19th & 20th Century Art brought $721k with 81% of lots finding buyers.
An eclectic and engaging dialogue between several European, American, and Latin American artistic traditions and movements, this 19th & 20th Century Art auction will include original artwork, prints, and sculpture.
2024 was an eventful year for Swann that brought about exciting changes, including the reorganization of our Fine Art Department, which saw Nigel Freeman step in as the head of…
After 10 years with Swann and the reorganization of the house’s fine art offerings, Lisa Crescenzo is now the Managing Director of Fine Art. As she transitions into her new…
In the 2024 Winter-Spring season, Swann Galleries continued to provide high-quality auctions of unusual and rare material. Several single-owner collections were featured, including Illustration Art: Featuring Highlights from the Collection…
Swann Galleries announced on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, the reorganization of their fine art offerings under the leadership of Nigel Freeman. This change comes with the news of the retirement…
A Note From Swann Galleries President Nicholas D. Lowry May 24, 2024 In an industry not particularly known for big changes, Swann Galleries is about to undergo the kind of…
The March 14 sale of 19th & 20th Century Art features a strong selection of original artworks, among them a run of those working in Eastern Europe in the first…
An array of fine art bridges the seasons and centuries with nineteenth-century and Modern paintings, drawings and prints, as well as a section devoted to Latin American modernists.
Swann Galleries opened the winter 2024 season with the fourth iteration of The Artist of the WPA. The timed online auction closed Thursday, January 25, with an 89% sell-through rate…
Swann Galleries continued to offer exceptional auctions of quality material in 2023. The year featured several collections, including a special selection of 100 works from the Stephen White collection in…
Joseph Cornell & His Own Brand of American Surrealism Though now considered one of the few American proponents of Surrealism, Joseph Cornell was apprehensive about the affiliation, once admitting to…
Dada & Surrealism We are especially excited for the current iteration of our annual Nineteenth & Twentieth Century Art auction offering a selection of 150 lots devoted to modern artists…
2022 was a historic year for Swann in more ways than one. The house celebrated its 80th year of auctions, bringing with it the 70th anniversary of the first photography…
The winter-spring auction season at Swann is a masterclass in marathon training, and the 2022 iteration proved no different with 20 auctions held between late January and the middle of August.
The 1920s were a time of prosperity in America. World War I had ended and the pessimism of the 1910s turned into optimism for modern life. American artists continued to focus on developing their artistic voices and both institutions and galleries were formed to bring their work to a broader audience.
The 1913 Armory Show Inspired by time spent in Europe, around 1910, Arthur Dove became the first American artist to paint an abstract painting. At this time, abstract art was…
James Macry in our prints and drawings department examines two works that exemplify the market for Edward Hopper prints Edward Hopper first began printmaking in 1915, following the encouragement and…
Highlights include a recently discovered self portrait by the Italian modernist Giacomo Balla, Il disperato; Autoritratto, oil on canvas, circa 1898-1900, as well as a large drawing by Gustav Klimt…
The house opened 2022 with The Artists of the WPA on Thursday, January 27. The follow-up to an inaugural 2021 sale proved the staying power of this special offering with…
As we close out another successful year at Swann we look back at our record-filled sales.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro rediscovered lithography as a medium both to recreate their artistic conceptions on paper and simultaneously achieve widespread distribution…
In a year that was unlike any in our lifetimes, Swann’s specialists and staff proved to be as resilient and innovative as ever, bringing forward new and safe ways to…
Our sale of Fine Books & Manuscripts on Thursday, July 30, 2020 boasted high prices across categories with early printed books leading the sale, two records being recorded for literature, and autograph material from world leaders garnering attention.
Our Thursday, March 5, 2020 sale of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings saw success: “With more internet bidding, particularly via the Swann App, than any previous sale in the 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings category at Swann, with action from across the United States, Europe and Asia, and nearly 20% of buyers new to Swann. The most robust sections of the auction were the American prints and modern European prints and drawings,” noted Todd Weyman, the house’s director of prints and drawings.
Rockwell Kent’s wood engravings and lithographs often convey solitude, spirituality and inner turmoil. Relatable and at the same time, pure fantasy, Kent’s subjects battle the elements as they cling to…
The color woodcut is best known for being one of the most difficult printmaking methods, but artists over the centuries have continually engaged with this medium, innovating new techniques to cut into a raw piece of wood or linoleum, transforming it into an image that inspires.
Swann Galleries opened the fall 2019 season with an exceptional sale of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings featuring an auction debut for a rare early print by Martin Lewis and a record price for a print by Edvard Munch.
Swann Galleries’ sale of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings on September 19 features property from Betty and Douglas Duffy, of the Bethesda Art Gallery and highlights American printmakers such as Howard Cook, Thomas Hart Benton, Rockwell Kent and John Sloan.
Ismar Littmann Family Collection Shines in Swann Galleries’ Prints & Drawings Sale Our sale of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings on March 5 earned $2.7M, with property from the Ismar Littmann Family Collection of German Expressionism &…
Our March 5 sale of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings will feature Property from the Ismar Littmann Family Collection of German Expressionism and European Avant-Garde. Director of Prints…
Architectural Splendor Shines at Swann Galleries The fall season opened on September 20 with a marathon sale of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings earning more than $2.4…
From the Chrysler building to the Flatiron, and the numerous bridges that connect its many boroughs, New York’s architecture has come to stand as a symbol for the city. Our September…
Egon Schiele is celebrated among the Austrian Modern Masters Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, who are best remembered for their insightful portrayal of the human condition. Schiele’s style was informed…
Among the items that Swann auctions are books, fine art prints, photographs, posters and maps–all of which have their own definition of the word “edition.” When it comes to prints,…
One of the most common questions we get asked at Swann is what it means when a lot is catalogued with the word “after” in parentheses following an artist’s name.…
Swann Galleries’ upcoming September 23 auction featuring American Prints & Drawings includes Blanche Lazzell’s Tulips, color woodcut on Japan paper, 1920, created by the artist in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1920. Lazzell (1878-1956) was…
Picasso produced more than 150 color linoleum cuts in the 1950s and 60s, but none stood out more for their boldness of execution and sheer artistry than his colorful, semi-abstract portraits…
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was among the most significant players in the Impressionist movement and co-wrote the manifesto for the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs. Of the eight exhibitions held…
Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was a Norwegian Symbolist and Expressionist painter/printmaker who, unlike the Impressionists in their focus on the natural world, looked inward to portray basic human conditions—love, jealousy, anxiety, loneliness, illness and…
Amid all of the shock, sensationalism and bewilderment surrounding many of the works in the 1913 Armory Show, much of the harshest criticism was levied at the paintings of Paul Cézanne, though…
This is the first in a series of posts about Swann’s upcoming November 5 auction titled The Armory Show at 100: America’s Introduction to Modern Art. The following essay by…
Swann will offer a László Moholy-Nagy gouache and watercolor Composition in our 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings auction tomorrow. Moholy-Nagy (1894-1946) was an influential Jewish-Hungarian artist known for…
This year we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the famed 1913 Armory Show. The seminal show was originally held in the 69th Regiment Armory at Lexington & 25th Street, just across…
Decadent! Erotic! Phantasmagoric! Fin-de-siècle grotesqueries! Gents and ladies disporting themselves, occasionally with a zealous attention by attending friends from the animal kingdom! The provocative work of Austrian artist Franz von…
The informal co-operative printmaking workshop that English painter and draftsman Stanley William Hayter opened in 1927 had its modest and unforeseen beginnings at his own dilapidated studio in Paris. In 1933 he moved…
Our September 2011 auction of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings set three auction records for prints by important artists. Furthering our position as the leading auction house for…
Our October 27 & 28, 2010 two-part print sale, which began with Whistler and His Influence on Wednesday, set records. James A. M. Whistler’s Nocturne became the most expensive Whistler print…
James A. M. Whistler’s work in lithography dates from three distinct periods of his career. His two earliest lithographs, from 1855, were made in the U.S. just prior to his…
Pictured here is Marvin Newma