Joseph Raphael, a California native, studied at the California School of Design.
He saved money during the 1890s, first as a newspaper illustrator and later as a sign painter, to continue his artistic studies overseas. He spent most of his life aboard, living 36 years in Paris and the Netherlands.
Joseph Raphael (American, 1869–1950), Portrait of a Young Lady, oil on canvas (laid down on board), 16″ x 12.25″. Sold: $3,780
Keeping strong ties to San Francisco, he exhibited his paintings regularly in local shows and through Albert Bender, a patron of early works of Ansel Adams and Diego Rivera. Before World War II, he returned to San Francisco and maintained a studio on 345 Sutter Street until his death on December 11, 1950.
Gondek is known for colorful canvases with thick, bold lines depicting cartoon and comic book characters from the late 20th century.
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Artist Spotlight: Anthony Liggins
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
This May at Clars, we are pleased to offer two acrylic on canvas paintings by Atlanta-Miami-based artist, Anthony Liggins.
Liggins, born in 1965, is a leading figure in the American abstract expressionist resurgence, as well as a prominent African American artist with an international presence.
Anthony Liggins (American, b. 1965), Blue Angel, acrylic on canvas, 36″ x 36″. Estimate $4,000–$6,000
Liggins names music and dance as two of his major inspirations. In the two pieces offered at Clars this month, titled Blue Angel and Sacred Oasis, the impacts of rhythm and movement are apparent. Melting streaks of color echo sonic waves, which are interspersed with repetitive, grid-like dot work, and bold swaths of color play between rigid lines to create a dynamic interaction of the geometric and organic. The two paintings by Anthony Liggins are each estimated at $4,000–$6,000.
Anthony Liggins (American, b. 1965), Sacred Oasis, acrylic on canvas, 36″ x 36″. Estimate: $4,000–$6,000
Gondek is known for colorful canvases with thick, bold lines depicting cartoon and comic book characters from the late 20th century.
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Artist Spotlight: Red Grooms
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Known for the absurdist humor in his Pop Art compositions, Red Grooms has worked as a painter, sculptor, and printmaker, taking the latter method to a new level in the work being offered in Clars’ Fine Interiors & Design Auction.
Red (Charles Rogers) Grooms (American, b. 1937), De Kooning Breaks Out, 1986, three-dimensional lithograph and collage in colors, 43″ x 28.75″ x 7″. Sold: $2,520
The collaged lithograph, titled De Kooning Breaks Out, depicts famed Dutch-American artist Willem de Kooning pedaling a bicycle with a female figure, taken from one of his many Woman paintings, riding on the handlebars. The figures quite literally “break out” in this instance, with the printed paper folding and layered to create a three-dimensional composition. This piece is estimated at $4,000–$6,000.
Gondek is known for colorful canvases with thick, bold lines depicting cartoon and comic book characters from the late 20th century.
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Artist Spotlight: Joan Miró
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life,” Joan Miro (Spanish, 1893–1983).
Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893–1983), Makemono, 1956, color lithographic scroll in colors on silk with wooden batons (accompanied with original carved and painted wood box), 16.13″ x 382″ (41 x 970 cm). Sold: $16,250
Disrupting the visual elements of established style, Joan Miró was a painter who combined abstract art with surrealist fantasy. He was a leading light of the Surrealist movement, and his work had a significant impact on a wide range of artists — earning Miró recognition as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893–1983), Sculptures (M. 950), 1974, lithograph in colors on BFK Rives France, 20″ x 29.5″. Sold: $441
Gondek is known for colorful canvases with thick, bold lines depicting cartoon and comic book characters from the late 20th century.
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Artist Spotlight: Andy Warhol
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Published in 1979, Andy Warhol’s bizarre take on the classic traditional subject of fruit still lifes, titled Space Fruit: Still Life Series, underscores his evolving interest in abstract art in the late 1970s.
He placed many pieces of fruit against a white background and cast harsh light upon them to create exaggerated shadows and light-based contrast.
Andy Warhol (American, 1928–1987), Peaches from Space Fruit: Still Life Series, 1979, screenprint, 30″ x 40″. Sold: $17,500
Peaches, a work from the series, gives Warhol space to experiment with colors and compositions, showcasing his interest in vibrant unrealistic colors and exaggerated shadows. Presenting an original view of a peach, this work pushed boundaries between the depiction of nature and consumer products. This series is highly sought after by the collectors and Peaches will be offered on March 18th at Clars Auction Gallery.
Gondek is known for colorful canvases with thick, bold lines depicting cartoon and comic book characters from the late 20th century.
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Artist Spotlight: Norman Rockwell
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Norman Rockwell was a prolific American painter and illustrator, best known for depicting everyday American life.
Norman Rockwell (American, 1894–1978), The Conniosseur, color collotype, 27″h x 21.5″w. Sold: $2,000
He was commissioned to illustrate over 40 books, including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Rockwell is probably best known for his cover illustration for the Saturday Evening Post.
Norman Rockwell (American, 1894–1978), Study – Crestwood Commuter Station (for Cover Illustration, Saturday Evening Post, November 16, 1946) & Portrait of an Equestrian Gentleman (verso), circa 1946, charcoal on paper (double-sided), 21.5″ x 20″. Sold: $242,000
Rockwell’s career with the Saturday Evening Post spanned 47 years, from his first cover illustration in 1916, to his last in 1963 — a Portrait of John F. Kennedy.
Gondek is known for colorful canvases with thick, bold lines depicting cartoon and comic book characters from the late 20th century.
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Artist Spotlight: Yayoi Kusama
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Yayoi Kusama is well known for her sculptures, installations, paintings, performances and fashion. Kusama is the highest-selling living female artist and has a body of work that spans over the past 70 years.
A preeminent figure in the art world, Kusama emerged onto the art scene in the 1960s in New York, collaborating with Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenberg, and Robert Morris and contributed to the rise of feminist and pop art.
Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1939), A Pumpkin GB-D, 2004, screenprint, 9.4″h x 11.1″w. Sold: $40,625
Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929), Grapes, 1982, screenprint, 12.4″ x 10.6″. Sold: $38,750
Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1939), Pumpkin, 1983, screenprint, 23″h x 19″w. Sold: $31,250
Throughout her work, Kusama has explored such themes as her own obsessive-compulsive disorder, hallucinations, sexuality and freedom. Various Kusama prints that were sold at Clars exhibit her signature style, featuring polka dots and nets in dense patterns with obsessive repetition.
Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1939), Pumpkin, 1983, screenprint, 23″h x 19″w. Sold: $87,500
Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929), Top left:Pumpkin (Y), 1992, screenprint, 6.25″h x 8.75″w. Top Right:Dancing Pumpkin (YOR), 2004, screenprint, 15.5″h x 22.25″w. Bottom Left:Napping Pumpkin, 1993, screenprint, 21″h x 25.75″w. Bottom Right:Red Colored Pumpkin, 1994, screenprint, 18″h x 20.75″w. Sold: $108,750
In 1993, Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale. She has been the subject of major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern, and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo as well as a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2012. In 2017, she opened the Yoyoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo near her studio and the psychiatric hospital where she has voluntarily lived since 1977.
Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929), High Heels, 1986, screenprint, 12.4″h x 16″w. Sold: $17,500
Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929), Town, 1999, screenprint, 18.8″h x 23.4″w. Sold: 13,750
Left: Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929), Pumpkin, 1982, lithograph in colors with collage, 22.75″h x 18.75w″. Sold: $21,250 Right: Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929), Pumpkin God, 1993, screenprint, 28.75″h x 21″w. Sold: $26,250
Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1939), Flower (1), 1992, lithograph in color, 9.4″h x 11.1″w. Sold: $12,500
Gondek is known for colorful canvases with thick, bold lines depicting cartoon and comic book characters from the late 20th century.
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Artist Spotlight: Pablo Picasso
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Pablo Picasso, known globally as one of the most important artists of the 20th century, was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer.
In our February 2023 Important Modern + Contemporary Art Auction, Clars offered a rare ceramic plate by Picasso which caught the attention of many phone bidders.
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973), Visage Masque, 1947, ceramic plate, 12.5″ x 15″ (31.75 x 38.1 cm). Sold: $68,750
During the 1940s, Picasso attended a pottery exhibition in the commune of Vallauris in the south of France. He was inspired by his experience to stay in the area, working at the Galerie Madoura as a prolific potter, creating over three thousand vases, plates, tiles, and other objects. Common themes in these ceramics are animals including bulls, birds, and fish, Roman and Greek mythology, and the human form.
The plate sold at Clars follows Picasso’s tradition of working with simplified lines and shapes to create a human face, or Visage as the ceramics are known, similar to the paintings made during his synthetic cubism and African-inspired periods. Picasso’s Madoura ceramics continue to grow in popularity due to their accessibility as well as their versatility as decorative objects.
Left: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973), Visage (A. R. 288), 1955, terre de faience pitcher, painted in colors and partially glazed, 12″ x 4″ x 5″. Right: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973), Quatre visages (A.R. 436), 1959, white terre de faience pitcher with colored engobe and glaze, 9″ x 5.5″ x 7.5″. Sold: $14,437.50
Other Picasso Madoura ceramics that Clars has offered include two ceramic pitchers, titled Visage and Quatre Visage. Both pieces were both produced at the Madoura de Vallauris workshop in the 1950’s and have Picasso and Madoura stamped beneath.
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973), Études VII (d’après Manet), 1961, graphite on les Annonay (watermarked) paper, 17.75″ x 23.5″. Provenance: Alex Maguy, Paris; Estate of Liselotte Weber (Burlingame, CA). Exhibited: Alex Maguy Galerie de L’Élysée, Hommage à Picasso, November 19–December 25, 1966. Reference: Zervos XX:50. Sold: $150,000.
The second highest selling lot from Clars’ March 2022 Modern + Contemporary Art + Design Auction, selling at $150,000, was a rare drawing by Picasso titled, Études VII (d’après Manet), from 1961. Well-documented in the artist’s catalogue raisonné, the lot had multiple international bidders, but in the end sold to a buyer in San Francisco.
At the same sale, a linocut by Picasso, titled Le Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe, d’après Manet II, achieved $16,250.
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973), Le Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe, d’après Manet II, 1962, linocut in black and white, 20.75” x 25”. Sold: $16,250
Gondek is known for colorful canvases with thick, bold lines depicting cartoon and comic book characters from the late 20th century.
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Artist Spotlight: Tom Wesselmann
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
American artist Tom Wesselmann began his career in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, later moving to New York City to teach art, where his creativity blossomed, and he began his Great American Nude series.
For over a decade, Wesselmann added to the series, which consisted of works both small and large depicting the nude female form in a variety of poses, and always surrounded by objects familiar to his American audience, including ice cream sundaes, radiators, and Camel cigarettes, to name a few. These elements in Wesselmann’s work, which were sometimes collaged from photographs or painted by the artist himself, led many to include him in the burgeoning Pop Art movement of the 1960s.
Tom Wesselmann (American, 1931–2004), The Great American Nude #13, 1962, oil, fabric, and collage cut-outs on tin, 7″ x 7″. Sold: $162,500
Wesselmann himself rejected this label, saying he utilized the objects in his compositions not to make a statement on consumerism, but because of his interest in the aesthetics of the everyday. Indeed, the works in Wesselmann’s Great American Nude series show Coca-Cola bottles, presidential portraits, and rotary telephones decorating the background of each room; objects of American mundanity, juxtaposed with the playful and dynamic nude figures for which the artist is known.
Gondek is known for colorful canvases with thick, bold lines depicting cartoon and comic book characters from the late 20th century.
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
Artist Spotlight: Chiura Obata
Artist Spotlight
Modern + Contemporary
While attending the Nihon Bijutsuin art school in Tokyo, Japan, Okayama-born artist, Chiura Obata, was trained in both Japanese and Western painting techniques — a unique education that would influence his style over the years.
Chiura Obata (American/Japanese, 1885–1975), Storm on Lyell Mountain (from the World Landscape Series), 1930, woodcut print in colors, 10.75″ x 15.5″. Sold: $13,000
As a young man entering the United States, Obata settled in California and focused his talents on depicting the landscapes he saw, ranging from deserts and treeless plains to the cliffs and lakes of Yosemite. Obata found success with these subjects, working in both painting and woodblock printing, and began his teaching career at the University of California, Berkeley in 1932. During the second World War, Obata experienced discrimination due to his Japanese identity and was interned at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah, where he painted some of his darkest and most emotionally resounding works.
Left: Chiura Obata (American/Japanese, 1885–1975), Evening at Clark Inn (from the World Landscape Series), 1930, woodcut print in colors, 15.5″ x 10.75″. Sold: $7,150 Right: Chiura Obata (American/Japanese, 1885–1975), Upper Lyell Fork (from the World Landscape Series), 1930, woodcut print in colors 15.5″ x 10.75″. Sold: $9,100
Throughout his career, the marriage of Japanese and Western approaches to visual language set Obata apart from his peers both in Japan and in the United States. Using Japanese techniques, like woodblock printing and sumi ink-and-brush painting, while portraying distinctly American landscapes earned him a glowing reputation in and around his chosen home of California. Obata’s work resonates within the blended cultures of the San Francisco Bay Area, where his art, whether in subject or technique, feels familiar to so many residents. Obata’s resiliency during and after confronting the horrors of war, with his continued commitment to cultural collaboration, feels just as inspirational and relevant today as it surely was during his lifetime.
Left: Chiura Obata (American/Japanese, 1885–1975), Shower, Point Lobos, 1933, watercolor and gouache on silk, 19.5″ x 14″. Sold: $15,000 Right: Chiura Obata (Japanese/American, 1885–1975), Deer Dance (Folk Dance), Scare Crow, Northeastern Prefecture, Japan, circa 1960, watercolor, gouache, and gold leaf on silk, 33.5″ x 21″. Sold: $18,750
