Rare Book Week kicks off March 5 in NYC. We gathered a selection of our favorite events happening throughout the week, as well as several not-to-be-missed exhibitions. See you there!…
Nigel Freeman, our African-American Fine Art director, stopped by the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University to view Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today. Here are Nigel’s takeaways on the exhibition: Posing Modernity is a…
A year of records, debuts and rediscovered works. As we reflect on 2018, we look back at an excellent year of auctions. In April we held our highest-grossing African-American Fine Art…
Thinking about selling at auction? Allow us to be of assistance. Swann is a third-generation family business and the oldest specialty auction house in New York City, known for our…
At Auction April 4 Complete Catalogue A powerful charcoal drawing by Charles White, Caliban, 1950, is one of the top lots in the sale. Never exhibited publicly, this rediscovered…
Selections from the Dr. Robert H. Derden Collection of Contemporary Art are featured in our October 4 African-American Fine Art sale, a private collection located in Chicago, Illinois. The works…
At Auction October 4 Complete Catalogue Highlights from our upcoming selection of fine art by African-American masters. Elizabeth Catlett Works by figurative greats include the earliest sculpture…
The 2017-18 auction season at Swann Galleries was replete with record prices and rediscovered paintings, offering works created as early as the fifteenth century and as recently as last year.…
We held our highest-grossing auction to date on April 5, totaling $4.5M—more than $1M over the high estimate of the sale. The 160 works that made up the highly curated…
Two extremely scarce prints from William H. Johnson’s Jitterbugs series will make their auction debut with African-American Fine Art on April 5. The series was conceived and executed during Johnson’s tenure in New York…
Two highlights of this sale on April 5 are significant, vibrant paintings by modernist New York artists. Beauford Delaney’s large Untitled (Village Street Scene), 1948, depicts a Greenwich Village corner in…
In our diamond anniversary year, we offered a star-studded roster of 30 auctions, setting nearly 100 records and introducing countless items to the market, including a previously unknown photograph of Harriet…
Four works exceeded $100,000 at our sale of African-American Fine Art on Thursday, October 5. A wealth of unique paintings, drawings and monotypes distinguished the sale of approximately 150 lots, nearly…
The highlight of our October 5 auction of African-American Fine Art is a series of unique works by Charles White that have never before appeared at auction. We spoke to our…
Alma Thomas is renowned for her brightly colored abstract works that seem to dance across canvas and paper, but how did she develop that iconic style? Two paintings that reveal…
The spring 2017 season at Swann Galleries marked the 75th anniversary of our first auction. On March 27, 1942, Benjamin Swann held an auction dedicated to rare and antiquarian books.…
From the catalogue of our April 6 sale of African-American Fine Art. Assemblage emerged as a dynamic new art form in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. The…
An accomplished graphic artist and sculptor, Elizabeth Catlett was known for her poignant depictions of African-American life, Mexican life (after her relocation to Mexico following a grant from the Rosenwald…
Thanksgiving weekend was tinged with grief this year as the art world mourned the loss of painter and print-maker Eldzier Cortor. Born in Richmond, Virginia in 1916, his family moved…
Swann Galleries is very proud to be offering for sale the art collection of one America’s great cultural heroes, Dr. Maya Angelou. Dr. Angelou’s homes were filled with paintings, sculpture…
On September 15, 2015 Swann Galleries offered The Art Collection of Maya Angelou. Author, poet, actress and champion of civil rights, Dr. Maya Angelou was one of the most dynamic voices…
Dr. Amalia Amaki, noted art historian and artist, wrote the catalogue introduction for The Richard A. Long Collection of African-American Art. Dr. Amaki, a native Atlantan, received her Ph.D in…
Last week, From the Margins: Lee Krasner and Norman Lewis opened at the Jewish Museum. The exhibition combines the works of an unlikely pair: Lee Krasner, a female Jewish artist…
Martha’s Vineyard, an affluent summer colony located on an island south of Cape Cod, has long attracted African American artists. The town of Oak Bluffs has been a favored vacation…
On October 9, as part of our Fall African-American Fine Art auction, Swann will offer the collection of Richard A. Long. Among these 60 works are pieces by early pioneers…
Last week Swann Galleries had the pleasure of hosting an artist talk with Barkley L. Hendricks, whose “unique work resides at the nexus of American realism and post-modernism, a space…
An auction focused on the politically charged and artistically fertile period of the 1960s and 70s, Swann Galleries’ African-American Fine Art auction titled The Shape of Things to Come on…
Swann Galleries is pleased to offer the first significant work by assemblage artist Noah Purifoy to come to auction in our upcoming sale of African-American Fine Art titled The Shape of Things…
Swann’s African-American Fine Art Department discusses art-world sensation Kara Walker. Kara Walker is one of the most well-known, respected and controversial artists of her generation. She’s been a star in…
On this date in 1969, Moneta Sleet, Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for this image of a mourning Coretta Scott King, with daughter Bernice, at the funeral…
Swann’s African-American Fine Art Department, writes about the catalogue cover image for the upcoming auction Shadows Uplifted: The Rise of African-American Art. The cover for our February 13 auction catalogue is…
Among the featured artists in Swann’s February 13, 2014 auction, Shadows Uplifted: The Rise of American-American Fine Art, are Pauline Powell Burns and Beulah Ecton Woodard. These early Californian artists…
The image chosen for the cover of Swann’s upcoming sale Point of Departure: Postwar African-American Fine Art is a circa 1957 Untitled oil on canvas by Norman Lewis. The previously unrecorded painting was acquired…
Figurative artists Eldzier Cortor, Hughie Lee-Smith and Charles White stayed true to their roots in social realism as their work evolved in the post-war decades. Unlike contemporaries Charles Alston, Norman…
Robert Scott Duncanson was the first African-American landscape painter to achieve international recognition. The son of a biracial tradesman from Virginia, and the grandson of a freed slave, Duncanson apprenticed in…
Romare Bearden is undoubtedly one of America’s greatest artists. Today, his collages are viewed as some of the most unique and significant contributions to 20th century American art. Born during…
Contemporary African-American artist David Hammons is known for his body prints and assemblages of found objects, such as his fly swatter. His oversize version of an African-American flag hangs outside the Studio…
Bob Thompson stood apart from most of his contemporaries in the early 1960s. On one hand, he was the epitome of a New York bohemian artist working in a Clinton…
Among the top lots in the February 23, 2010 auction of African-American Fine Art was a unique Fly Swatter created in 1992 by contemporary artist David Hammons, which sold for…
Among the highlights of our 15th annual auction of Printed & Manuscript African Americana is an incredible archive comprising James Amos Porter’s African-American Art History Reference materials. The lot contains…
Swann Galleries’ auction of African-American Fine Art on February 23, 2010, will offer approximately 160 lots from many notable collections and estates, including several museum-quality works. The sale’s top lot,…
A painting by Alma Thomas will be hung in the White House during the Obama administration! Sky Light, 1973 (left), and Watusi (Hard Edge), 1963 (right), by Alma Thomas,…
The image that graces the cover of the auction catalogue for Swann Galleries’ sale of African-American Fine Art on Thursday, October 8, 2009, is John Biggers’s powerful 1987 oil and…
Our October 8, 2009 auction of African-American Fine Art featured the Richard L. Brown painting Mt. Monadnock, 1911, which sold for $7,200.
Our October 8, 2009 African-American Fine Art auction marks the first time that early photographer Cornelius Marion Battey’s photographic portraits will come to auction. These photographs were recently discovered in…
Conversations: Among Friends – May 19, 2009 On May 19, 2009, 94-year-old Elizabeth Catlett and David C. Driskell shared “Conversations: Among Friends,” at the Museum of Modern Art. Driskell, a…
![Grace Meschery-McCormack shares about two copies of Fernando de Rojas’s ‘La Célestine,’ including a limited edition copy illustrated by Pablo Picasso.
At auction April 22. Learn more about the works at the link in our bio.
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