?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
JAMES LESESNE WELLS (1902-1995) Twin Heads.
Woodcut printed on thin laid Japan paper, circa 1930. 96x76 mm; 3 3/4x3 inches, wide (full ?) margins. Signed and titled in pencil, lower margin. A very good, dark impression of this scarce print.
Provenance: James. A. Porter; hence by descent to his daughter, Constance Porter-Uzelac.
James Lesesne Wells made an early career from his woodcuts and linoleum block prints, primarily as illustrations for text, many published in leading black periodicals, such as the Crisis and Opportunity. The work appears to be of the size, Afro-centric imagery and style of some of his earliest prints. Powell adds that like many other artists interested in the subject, Wells first initially encountered African Art in the ethnographic collections of the Brooklyn Museum. Richard Powell, Phoenix Ascending, James Lesesne Wells - Sixty Years in Art, p. 11.
