?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
Wheeler, Steve (1912-1992) Personal Archive of Sketchbooks, Notebooks, and Printing Blocks.
Circa 1930-1990.
Including: thirteen notebooks containing ink and graphite sketches, ideas for paintings, inspiration, diary entries, descriptions of dreams, important contacts, expense records, addresses, appointments, philosophical discussions about art history, and memories; a stunning example discusses Wheeler meeting fellow artist Paul Klee: "1923 - met Paul Klee - Klee making small abstract sketches […] Klee expressed belief that by observing the smallest interrelationship of forms, one could draw conclusions about nature of the universe".
Three sketchbooks dated May 1935 and 1938-39, containing ink and graphite sketches including croquis as well as fully executed portraits and scenes, numerous of which are signed and dated. One of these sketchbooks includes multiple graphite portrait sketches by another unknown artist, signed "Holt" and dated 1928.
[Together with] several linotype slugs, metal type, brass letterpress printing plates, printing blocks of engraved zinc mounted on wood for imposition or letterpress printing from several of his publications.
The present archive belonging to Steve Wheeler, [born Stephen Brosnatch], spans the abstract expressionist artist's career in both sketches and writing. Beginning his training at East Coast art schools in the early 1930s, Wheeler would go on to develop theories related to conceptual space and pictorial language influenced by the framework of Native American art. His oeuvre of paintings is markedly different from the works found in these journals, which demonstrate his evolving philosophies and the role of classical figure drawing as the basis for his creation of the various archetypal characters which define his later body of work. It is a remarkable insight into the mind of such an erudite creator.
