Apr 04, 2019 - Sale 2504

Sale 2504 - Lot 13

Price Realized: $ 32,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
AUGUSTA SAVAGE (1892 - 1962)
Pair of dancing figures.

Untitled (Flute Player), painted plaster, circa 1939. Approximately 13 inches high. With the artist's signature incised on the base edge * Untitled (Dancer), painted plaster, circa 1939. Approximately 15 1/2 inches high. With the artist's signature incised on the base.

Provenance: private collection, New York.

Savage made two other similar sculptures of dancing figures, Susie Q and Truckin', both circa 1939. Savage is pictured posing with the two sculptures in a photograph from her archives in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the photograph is illustrated in the monograph Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman that accompanies this retrospective. The location of both figures is not known today. The Susie Q and Truckin, like the Jitterbug and the Lindy Hop, were popular dance moves of the period, especially in Harlem dance halls like the Savoy Ballroom through the 1930s.

These two plaster works are a very scarce pair of sculptures by Augusta Savage. We have located only a few other examples. Hayes fig 9, p. 31 and fig. 20, p. 61.