A painting of Robert Colescott (1925-2009) which served as a focal point for the late artist recent retrospective on tour will be offered in a special one-lot sale at Bonhams New York in September, straight from the Colescott family collection.
Painted Colescott 1919 (1980) at the height of his practice, according to Bonhams, and it is one of his most important works. The sale will be the first time the painting has hit the market, and Bonhams expects it to fetch between $3 million and $5 million, making it one of Colescott’s most valuable works at auction. . The sale will take place on September 8 in New York, coinciding with The Armory Show and its many satellite fairs.
Colescott, a light-skinned black American who could pass for white, used the paint to weave the history of race in the United States and his own personal experiences, according to Bonhams. Colescott painted his parents standing on either side of a map of the United States, reflecting his family’s move from New Orleans, Louisiana, which was at the time racially segregated, to Oakland, California. The skin tones he used to depict his parents also highlighted their attitudes towards race: Colescott’s mother is depicted with a lighter complexion, while Colsecott painted his father’s skin with lighter colors. dark. The contrasting tones used by Colescott reflect how his parents identified themselves, according to Bonhams. Colescott’s mother resisted being identified as black, despite Colescott’s father disagreeing. Colescott continued to identify as white until the mid-1960s, when a trip to Egypt led him to rethink his identity, which he explored through his painting.
The canvas was featured in Colescott’s 2019 retrospective at the Cincinnati Center for Contemporary Art, Art and Race Matter: The Career of Robert Colescott, which then traveled to Portland, Sarasota, Chicago and finally to the New Museum in New York in 2022.
In February, during Frieze Los Angeles, Bonhams sold Coelscott’s painting Miss Liberty (1980) for $4.5 million (including fees) to the Art Bridges Foundation, a non-profit organization created by billionaire Walmart heiress Alice Walton, who in 2011 founded the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Walton used his wealth to buy rare works of art at auction for the museum’s collection. Colescott’s auction record was set in 2021 when George Washington Carver crossing the Delaware (1975) sold for the record sum of 15.3 million dollars (including fees) at Sotheby’s. It was purchased by the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which is scheduled to open in Los Angeles in 2025.
