?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 25,000 - $ 35,000
BETYE SAAR (1926 - ) Sojourn.
Mixed media assemblage in a wooden box, 1995. 305x206x57 mm; 12x8 1/8x2 1/4 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right verso, and titled in ink, lower left verso.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist, private collection, California (1997); thence by descent to the current owner, California (2005).
Exhibited: Betye Saar: Personal Icons, Women and Their Work: Bold About Art, Austin, TX, Jun 21, 1996 - Sat Aug 10, 1996, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE, August 31 - October 13, 1996 (exhibition travelled to Desaisset Museum, Santa Clara, CA; The University Art Museum, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM; Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass Village, CO).
Illustrated: Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins. Betye Saar: Personal Icons, p. 22.
Betye Saar's Sojourn is an excellent, evocative collage of carefully selected objects steeped in symbolic meaning. In her exhibition essay, LeFalle-Collins notes how Saar uses the plush surface of the tapestry in Sojourn to construct an intimate interior and a spiritual space. The striking central imagery of the messenger bird flying while shackled in chains symbolizes the obstacles faced by African Americans in their pursuit of freedom. LeFalle-Collins p. 44.
