Jun 01, 2023 - Sale 2639

Sale 2639 - Lot 84

Price Realized: $ 1,875
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
Olds, Elizabeth (1896-1991)
Harlem River Bridges.

1940.

Screenprint on paper, landscape format, depicting three bustling New York City bridges spanning the river, with a tug and barges in the foreground, titled and signed by the artist in pencil along the bottom edge, who has also noted the medium at the left corner: silk screen; sheet slightly toned, one corner bent, matted, 20 1/2 x 12 1/2 in.

Olds was an illustrator and painter known primarily for her skilled print-making. She worked for both the WPA and Federal Art Project during the Depression. A Minnesotan by birth, in the time this particular image was created, Olds was working in New York with her friend and fellow artist Harry Gottlieb. Together, from 1939 until 1941, they ran the Silk Screen School. In the same year that she produced Harlem River Bridges, her screenprints were included in the MoMA show, American Color Prints Under $10.