?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 80,000 - $ 120,000
PABLO PICASSO Fleurs.
Color crayons on cream wove paper, 1959. 315x201 mm; 12⅜x7⅞ inches. Signed and dated "24.4.59" in crayon, lower recto.
Provenance: Herman C. Goldsmith, New York, with the label; (likely) Bloomingdale's, New York; purchased from the above by private collection, New York; thence by descent to the current owner, New York.
By the 1920s, department stores, especially R.H. Macy & Co. and Lord & Taylor, rivalled, and at times partnered with, art museums in their exhibitions of design, decorative art, and furnishings. In the first half of the 1920s Florine Stettheimer showed her works in Belmaison, Wanamaker's sophisticated two story gallery for luxurious home furnishings, interior design, and modern art, though the store's display of fine art predated these exhibitions. In his 1929 publication, Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and its Display, Frederick Kiesler predicted that "Department stores are rapidly becoming social centers; and there are signs that their cultural force will become stronger… Architects, painters, artists… their creations are displayed in the stores. From the stores they pass into the home. Into your home." By November 1941, Gimbel Brothers held their first public art auction at their New York store, dedicating their entire 11th floor to the installation of the auction gallery (the 5th floor was also devoted to exhibiting art). The auctions were conducted and staffed by Kende Galleries.
Once Gimbel Galleries opened, other department stores, including Bloomingdale's followed suit. Their exhibitions, at times sponsored by the WPA Federal Art Project, were often announced in the pages of art trade publications. The department stores did not seek to become direct competitors with art galleries, and several became business partners and lenders to exhibitions. Seeking a new image as a more upscale shopping destination, Bloomingdale's partnered with Midtown Galleries to decorate the New York store and to sell the gallery's artworks to their customers in the 1950s. In September 1955, the store mounted a selling exhibition by Sculptors Guild of New York. The trend in offering art to the masses continued into the 1960s, with Bamberger's in Newark, a division of Macy's with close ties with the Newark Museum, exhibited imported Spanish relics and, as the store claimed, the first public display in the United States of a group of 20 Picasso lithographs in 1964.
As department stores followed the American population into the suburbs and smaller cities, there became less focus on large flagship stores in major financial centers. This decentralization of market share not only led to the demise of specialty services and offerings at flagship stores, including the art exhibitions, cooking showcases, and educational workshops of the past, but caused the closing of several stores altogether in the late 20th century, a trend which continues today.
