Over two generations, six many years and hundreds of titles, the father-and-son co-founders of Abbeville Press, Harry and Robert Abrams, pushed the artwork guide to new heights. In addition they amassed a world-class assortment of Twentieth-century artwork alongside the way in which. Now lots of their works are set to hit the public sale block for the primary time at Sotheby’s in New York.
On 27 September the public sale home will host a devoted dwell sale of standouts from the household’s holdings, that includes works by artists starting from Christo, Alexander Calder and Jean Dubuffet to Isamu Noguchi, Marisol and Bob Thompson. A web-based sale delving deeper into their assortment shall be staged the identical week. Altogether, Sotheby’s estimates that the works within the dwell and on-line auctions will make between $11m and $16m.
Harry N. Abrams had been slowly furnishing his house with artwork for years earlier than he based an eponymous publishing home—the primary within the US to specialize in artwork books—in 1949. However by the point he bought that firm (which continues as we speak as Abrams Books) in 1966, even mainstream America knew him as a serious collector. A profile in Life journal the earlier yr confirmed the writer lounging amongst items by Tom Wesselmann, Gerald Laing and George Segal, whereas a 1970 Public sale journal cowl story famous his savvy purchases of works by Jim Dine, David Hockney and Wayne Thiebaud. That Abrams was enamoured of Pop artwork made sense: a former advert man, he had distinguished himself from his publishing friends with a eager knack for branding.
Harry N. Abrams (left) and his son Robert (proper) have been near lots of the artists whose work they collectedCourtesy Cynthia Vance-Abrams and Sotheby’s
Extending artists’ voices via books
In 1977 Harry partnered along with his son Robert E. Abrams to launch a brand new publishing home for artwork books referred to as Abbeville Press. When Harry died two years later, Robert took over. He remained atop the corporate in numerous roles till his personal demise, at age 80, in 2023—a tenure marked by the identical commitments to craft, high quality and inventive integrity that his father preached. “It mattered a lot to Bob and his father that they discover a technique to prolong the voice of artists … via these books,” Cynthia Vance-Abrams, Robert’s widow, tells The Artwork Newspaper.
Forward of the public sale, Vance-Abrams and different members of the Abrams clan started narrowing down a subset of practically 100 works that, in response to Sotheby’s senior specialist Nicole Schloss, “actually spoke to Harry and Bob’s amassing philosophies”. Items by Allan D’Arcangelo, Robert Indiana and Mel Ramos mirror the Abramses’ shared love of Pop artwork, whereas works by Mary Bauermeister, Georges Mathieu and Jesús Rafael Soto bespeak their mutual curiosity in form-pushing artwork from past North America.
Headliner
Headlining the dwell sale is Research for Vitality Void, a torqued stone sculpture made in 1971 by Noguchi. Though the artist, who as soon as stated that he “carried this idea of the void like a weight on [his] shoulders”, created three sculptures bearing this trapezoidal type, the Abramses’ model, bought straight from Noguchi in 1979, is the one one made from marble. The piece held delight of place in the midst of the “artwork barn”, an enclave in upstate New York impressed by Philip Johnson’s Glass Home that Vance-Abrams custom-designed with Robert within the 2000s to showcase the household’s treasured books and artworks, lots of which have been handed down from Harry. Research for Vitality Void is “top-of-the-line—if not the most effective—Isamu Noguchi marbles to ever come to public sale”, Schloss says. Sotheby’s expects it to promote for between $3m and $5m.
Different highlights of the public sale embody Alex Katz’s 1974 portrait Joan, estimated to fetch $1.5m to $2m; Fernando Botero’s 1977 portray El Cardenal, with a $700,000 to $1m goal vary; and Bob Thompson’s panoramic Nativity Scene (round 1964), which starred within the late artist’s travelling survey exhibition from 2021 till 2023 and will now convey between $500,000 and $700,000.
Sculptures by two different latest museum exhibition topics, the mononymous post-war artists Marisol and Chryssa, include humbler presale targets however larger potential for bidding fireworks. Of Marisol’s dual-figure The Bicycle Race (1962-63), which was featured within the 1965 Life article on Harry Abrams, Schloss says “we count on and hope that will probably be considerably of a record-setter” at its $250,000 to $350,000 estimate. “And the identical factor could be stated about Chryssa,” she provides, referring to the Greek American sculptor’s neon-in-Plexiglas work The Automat (1971-72), tagged to promote for between $150,000 and $200,000. (The highest public sale outcomes for the 2 artists are $912,000 for Marisol’s The Cocktail Get together, bought at Sotheby’s in New York in 2005, and round $331,000 for Chryssa’s Les portes de Instances Sq., New York, bought at Bonhams in Paris in 2022.)
‘Speaking with artists was Bob’s pleased place’
Chryssa, who maintained a protracted relationship with the Abramses, was little doubt an occasional visitor on the full of life dinner events that each Harry and Robert beloved to organise with the artists whose work they collected or printed. Vance-Abrams recollects chatty meals with Richard Lindner, Larry Poons and Lina Iris Viktor, in addition to the time she and her husband volleyed ideas about “artwork and worry with Larry Bell over ramen”. In work and leisure, “speaking with artists was Bob’s pleased place”, she provides.
It was a love he got here by truthfully, as evidenced by one other memorable meal in household lore. After lunch with Harry on the Abramses’ Manhattan house someday within the early Nineteen Sixties, Andy Warhol invited Robert and his brother Michael, simply youngsters then, on an arty journey to Instances Sq.. There, Warhol noticed a photobooth and directed the younger males inside as he fed it $5 value of quarters. The final coin yielded a very placing image of the brothers—one dealing with ahead, the opposite in profile—that Warhol became a trio of silkscreen portraits for Harry.
The gems that stay I view because the seeds for the subsequent chapter
These works, which the Abramses nonetheless personal, have been by no means thought of for consignment to Sotheby’s, nor have been many different items within the household’s holdings. Vance-Abrams declined to share the precise scale of the gathering however indicated it’s many occasions the dimensions of the choice coming to public sale. “There are gems that do stay, in fact. I view them because the seeds for the subsequent chapter,” she says. For her, amassing is a “residing, respiration course of. It’s a legacy that continues on, as does the publishing”.
The importance of this legacy is just not misplaced on the widow. “I feel the Abrams household assortment is an unimaginable story,” she says. “It’s an American story. And it’s a love story.”
