?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
HENRY W. BANNARN (1910 - 1965) Cleota.
Painted plaster, 1932. 432x191x234 mm; 17x7 1/4x9 1/4 inches. Signed, dated "6/9/32" and inscribed "To Cleota" in the plaster, at the rear of the neck truncation. Titled in the plaster, at the front edge of the base.
Provenance: private collection.
This impressive portrait is the first known sculpture by this artist to come to auction, and is a very scarce, early example of his work before the WPA.
Born in Wetumpka, OK on July 17, 1910, Bannarn moved with his family to Minneapolis when he was a child. This sculpture was made before Bannarn had won two first place prizes in sculpture at the Minnesota State Art Fair Art Galleries and showed at the Harmon Foundation in New York in 1933. He moved to New York in 1934 after leaving the Minneapolis School of Art. He and Charles Alston rented the studio that became the Harlem Workshop or the "306."
Cleota Josephine Collins (1893 -1976) was a soprano singer from Ohio who enjoyed some acclaim during the Harlem Renaissance. She was a member of the Tuskegee Institute faculty at the time of this portrait. Powell/Reynolds pp. 173-174.
