?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER Portrait of Holly.
Acrylic, pencil and charcoal on Celotex in the artist's frame, 1971. 390x295 mm;15 3/8x11 5/8 inches.
Provenance: Possibly with Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, or gifted by the artist, New York, to Norman Dolph, New York; thence by descent to the current owner.
The painting is part of a portrait series of Holly Solomon by Artschwager. Solomon was a leading contemporary art dealer and opened her gallery in Soho in 1975; her gallery represented artists such as Joan Mitchell, Gordon Matta-Clark, Laurie Anderson, Nam June Paik, Miriam Schapiro and Valerie Jaudon. Solomon was also the subject of several other contemporary and Pop artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. For the full-scale portrait of Solomon, now in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Artschwager (1923-2013) meticulously copied, and enlarged, a photograph of Solomon by William John Kennedy by gridding the image. Artschwager also isolated parts of the subject; Holly's Knee is in the collection of the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, and a portrait of her right foot sold at Wright Auctions, New York, December 11, 2008, lot 414.
