For more than fifty years, Spanierman Gallery cultivated a reputation as one of the country’s preeminent galleries dedicated to American Art. Founded by Ira Spanierman in 1961, the gallery initially offered a wide selection of material, including silver, arms and armor, Old Master, European and American art. Over time, Spanierman chose to focus exclusively on American art, a move that would establish the gallery as a tour-de-force in the field. Well-known for his outstanding ‘eye’ and dedication to connoisseurship, Spanierman was trusted by institutions and private collectors alike. The gallery was known to have sold to hundreds of museums across the United States and abroad while fostering the development of some of the country’s most prestigious private collections.
In addition to its reputation as a dealer, Spanierman Gallery was esteemed in the industry for its dedication and support of art scholarship. As a young man starting off in the business, Ira Spanierman recalled researching and identifying paintings through tedious research at the Frick Art Reference Library. These hours of study left an indelible mark on Spanierman who would go on to publish catalogue raisonnés for artists such as Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, Willard Metcalf, and co-sponsor the catalogue on the work of Winslow Homer.
When Spanierman Gallery closed in 2014 an impressive inventory remained. We are pleased to be offering a selection of these works in our upcoming auctions. Paintings and sculpture by artists such as John Haberle, Childe Hassam, Walter Schofield, Ibram Lassaw, Theodoros Stamos, George Segal and Patrick Procter among others, will be offered over two days. The sales also features work from a few of the estates acquired by the gallery, such as: Burgoyne Diller, Gershon Benjamin, Hayley Lever, Charles Warren Eaton, Sears Gallagher and Abraham Bogdanove.
Pavel Tchelitchew 1898–1957
Born in Russia to an aristocratic family, Pavel Tchelitchew expressed interest in art and ballet from a young age. He studied under Russian painter and designer Aleksandra Ekster at the Kiev Academy and, after graduating, moved on to designing and building theater sets in Odessa and Berlin in the early 1920s. It was in 1923, when he moved to Paris and became acquainted with Gertrude Stein and her circle, that his career truly began to develop. Tchelitchew’s particular interest in combining painting, film, and dance led him to collaborate with choreographer George Balanchine, stage designer Sergei Diaghilev, and British poet Edith Sitwell (with whom he developed a long-standing, close friendship).
Tchelitchew’s work was first shown, along with other artists, at the newly opened Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1930. He moved there several years later with his partner, writer Charles Henri Ford, where he continued to work with Balanchine and met his greatest patron, Lincoln Kirstein. Throughout the 1940s he contributed illustrations to the Surrealist magazine View. Tchelitchew’s style evolved throughout his career, beginning with Constructivist and Futurist influences early on to Neo-romanticism and eventually including elements of surrealism and fantasy.
Though he became a United States citizen in 1952, Tchelitchew spent most of his life in Italy from 1949 onward, dying there in 1957 with his partner, Ford, by his bedside. Tchelitchew’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
Auction Results Pavel Tchelitchew
