Over two generations, six a long time and hundreds of titles, the father-and-son co-founders of Abbeville Press, Harry and Robert Abrams, pushed the artwork guide to new heights. Additionally they amassed a world-class assortment of Twentieth-century artwork alongside the best way. 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 reside 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. An internet sale delving deeper into their assortment can be staged the identical week. Altogether, Sotheby’s estimates that the works within the reside and on-line auctions will make between $11m and $16m.
Harry N. Abrams had been slowly furnishing his dwelling 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 in the present day as Abrams Books) in 1966, even mainstream America knew him as a serious collector. A profile in Life journal the earlier 12 months 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) had been near most of the artists whose work they collectedCourtesy Cynthia Vance-Abrams and Sotheby’s
Extending artists’ voices by means of books
In 1977 Harry partnered together 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 varied roles till his personal demise, at age 80, in 2023—a tenure marked by the identical commitments to craft, high quality and creative 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 … by means of 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 keeping with Sotheby’s senior specialist Nicole Schloss, “actually spoke to Harry and Bob’s gathering 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 reside 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 kind, the Abramses’ model, bought immediately from Noguchi in 1979, is the one one product of marble. The piece held satisfaction of place in the course 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 artistic endeavors, lots of which had 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 embrace 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 carry between $500,000 and $700,000.
Sculptures by two different current museum exhibition topics, the mononymous post-war artists Marisol and Chryssa, include humbler presale targets however better 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 it will likely be considerably of a record-setter” at its $250,000 to $350,000 estimate. “And the identical factor might 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 Celebration, 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 comfortable place’
Chryssa, who maintained a protracted relationship with the Abramses, was little question an occasional visitor on the energetic 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 comfortable place”, she provides.
It was a love he got here by actually, as evidenced by one other memorable meal in household lore. After lunch with Harry on the Abramses’ Manhattan dwelling someday within the early 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 hanging image of the brothers—one going through ahead, the opposite in profile—that Warhol changed into a trio of silkscreen portraits for Harry.
The gems that stay I view because the seeds for the following chapter
These works, which the Abramses nonetheless personal, had been by no means thought of for consignment to Sotheby’s, nor had 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 scale of the choice coming to public sale. “There are gems that do stay, in fact. I view them because the seeds for the following chapter,” she says. For her, gathering is a “residing, respiration course of. It’s a legacy that continues on, as does the publishing”.
The importance of this legacy will not be misplaced on the widow. “I believe the Abrams household assortment is an unimaginable story,” she says. “It’s an American story. And it’s a love story.”
