Rago Auctions

20 | 21 Art 25 March 2020

The Visionary Eye of Allan Stone

Allan Stone; Allan Stone Gallery, New York, c. 1975. Images courtesy of the Allan Stone Collection

Founded in 1960 by art dealer Allan Stone (1932–2006), the New York gallery known today as Allan Stone Projects has been admired for over half a century. Celebrated for its eclectic approach and early advocacy of pivotal artists of the 20th century, Allan Stone Gallery was a leading authority on Abstract Expressionism, the New York dealer for Wayne Thiebaud for over forty years, and showed the works of Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Joseph Cornell, John Graham and John Chamberlain. Stone also promoted the work of a younger generation of artists that were in conversation with other artists in his collection, working in the mediums of assemblage, collage and new modes of abstraction. In addition to modern masterworks and contemporary art, Allan Stone also collected and exhibited international folk art, Americana and important decorative arts and industrial design.

Steve McCallum b. 1951

With their bright colors, energetic compositions, and spirited vernacular titles, Steven McCallum's paintings belong to a heroic American tradition that includes artists such as Stuart Davis and Willem de Kooning. McCallum's work is set apart by its postmodern approach to color, shape, space, and pattern, adding a whole new idiom, at once elegant and slangy, to the language of contemporary abstraction.

McCallum was born in Alliance, Ohio, in 1951 and received an MFA from Kent State University in 1976. He has exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and in Sweden. He has been awarded grants from the Gottlieb Foundation and the New York State Arts Council. His works are in collections that include the Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida and the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.

Auction Results Steve McCallum