BLAST #10 | Crossing Borders; Market Insights
Welcome to BLAST Issue 10
September 2023
Walter Richard Sickert (1860 – 1942) Theatre Performer, 1922-23, Pencil on paper, 35.6 x 22.8 cm. Courtesy of James Hyman GalleryThe feature exhibition at the British Art Fair this year is not, as in previous years, devoted to a single artist supplied by a single dealer, but an assembly of 75 works by over 50 artists supplied by 25 different dealers, the majority past, and present exhibitors at the Fair. Crossing Borders: Internationalism in Modern British Art was devised to highlight the significant contribution that artists who came to Britain to work from overseas during the 20th century had on Modern British art and the broad definition of ‘British’ art throughout the fair. In this show they came from Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, Central and Southern Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and America. The diversity of Britain’s cultural scene today owes much to them.
Some are now safely accepted within the art market cannon. Coming from Europe in the early 20th century, David Bomberg and Walter Sickert can make serious money as, from the mid-20th century, can the School of London artists, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, and Leon Kossoff.
Clara Klinghoffer (1900-1970) Bananas, 1923. Oil on canvas, 91 x 71 cm. Courtesy of Jack WakefieldStill to be properly recognised are two women – Clara Klinghoffer, who arrived from Poland in 1903 and whose work was much admired by Jacob Epstein and Tate curator, JB Manson, and Magda Cordell who survived the Holocaust to work for British intelligence becoming a rare female presence in the Independent Group of artists in 1950s London. Two excellent examples of their work in Crossing Borders reminds us that that there has been nothing of comparable quality (and therefore price) on the open market before.
Up there from India is Francis Newton Souza. But for years after his death in 2002, as dealer Julian Hartnoll, a previous exhibitor at British Art Fair who handled Souza’s estate, can attest, his works were difficult to sell even in the lower thousands. However, more recently, they have been fetching millions at auction.
There are many more still unsung heroes, though, who struggled to receive recognition in their lifetimes and have only recently made headway in the market. Two artists from Pakistan are worth watching in this respect. Anwar Shemza came to Britain in 1956 to study at the Slade but didn’t like the way Islamic art was regarded as purely functional and sought inspiration from the Islamic rooms in the British Museum instead. Now his work is the subject of a special display there, “a reminder,” says the museum, “of the role of South Asian artists in British art history.” At auction Shemza’s prices have shot up from four to six figures just in the last three years.
Rasheed Araeen, who arrived in 1964, was an engineer and self-taught as an artist. Perhaps best known as the founder of the Third Text magazine and as curator of the seminal Hayward Gallery 1989 exhibition The Other Story, which highlighted the work of racially and aesthetically marginalised artists in Britain, his work hardly ever appears at auction. But on the private market his small constructions, such as the example in Crossing Borders reach 25,000 pounds and large early works can sell for six figure sums at international art fairs.
Francis Newton Souza (1924-2002) Standing Nude in City Background, 1959. Oil on board, 121.9 x 60.9 cm. Courtesy of Grosvenor GalleryThe Windrush generation of artists from the Caribbean has been highlighted recently in the Tate Show, Life Between Islands, from which the abstract expressionist Aubrey Williams is clearly one to watch. Williams is the subject of a solo display currently at Tate Britain and in the last few years his auction prices have been rising consistently, from £2,000 a decade ago to over £20,000 today with prices nearer £75,000 on the private market for his best work, such as the example consigned to Crossing Borders by the October Gallery which has handled his work since the mid-1980s.
Also, in Life Between Islands and in Crossing Borders, are many lesser-known Caribbean British artists with little auction history, like Tam Joseph, whose best paintings can sell for six figures privately; Paul Dash, whose work has recently entered the Tate collection, can sell for similar amounts; and John Lyons, who won the Arts Council Windrush Arts Achievement Award this year, not far behind.
Included in Crossing Borders are artists on the up, driven largely by demand from their birthplace countries. Richard Lin, for instance, who was sent to public school in England from Taiwan and painted in a restrained minimalist style, enjoyed limited commercial success until shortly before his death in 2011 when he had returned to Taiwan and Taiwanese collectors were buying his work, sending prices from four to seven figures by 2018, since when his market has levelled off.
For Chinese born conceptual artist Li Yuan-chia who sought freedom of expression in Europe in the 1960s, settling in Cumbria, the market showed little enthusiasm until over 20 years after his death in 1994. Prices then rose to over $200,000 at auction for a group of small ten rectangles on white backgrounds while similar groups of monochromes with coloured magnetic discs sell for similar amounts at art fairs.
Another to watch is Singapore-born sculptor and print maker Kim Lim who came to London to study art and married fellow student William Turnbull. While there has been nothing of significance by her at auction, a sculpture was reportedly sold at the Armory Fair in New York this month for $250,000 – far ahead of her auction record £22,000 achieved against a £1,000 estimate at a Modern British sale at Sotheby’s two years ago.
If you can ever find it, Peter de Francia’s work seems to have never been on the market radar, perhaps because he was a teacher. A few drawings – vigorous and expressive - for under a couple of thousand pounds and less than a handful of paintings for only slightly more, have sold at auction. His time has surely yet to come.
But my unsung hero of the exhibition has to be Denis Bowen who never had much money and left a large estate to his nephew which has been taken over by Gallery Different. Bowen was orphaned as a child in South Africa and studied in England taking up the latest tachist style in Europe before moving into more cosmological subject matter. In the 1950s and 60s the gallery he set up in London, New Vision Centre, was a key venue for immigrant artists who were excluded from the mainstream including Aubrey Williams, Francis Newton Souza, Anwar Shemza and Balraj Khanna who are all in this show. Many of them were later represented in the Hayward Gallery’s seminal exhibition, The Other Story, curated by Rasheed Araeen in 1989. While some of the artists Bowen supported are now commanding five and six figure prices, his own market has yet to take off. A rare 1950s print and a late, 1999 painting in the Crossing Borders exhibition are priced at £2,750 and £3,800 respectively.
Denis Bowen (1921 - 2006) Composition in Black and Red (Flying City Series), 1956. Screenprint, 47 x 63.5 cm. Courtesy of Gallery Different and the Denis Bowen EstateColin Gleadell is the art market columnist for The Daily Telegraph and a regular contributor to Artnet News, Art Monthly, and Artsy. Prior to The Telegraph, he worked for the Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art as a researcher, the Crane Kalman Gallery as a gallery manager, and Bonhams auctioneers as Head of Modern Pictures. He worked for ten years (1986 – 1997) as the features editor of Galleries Magazine, whilst also contributing to leading art market publications such as Art & Auction and Art News where he was the London correspondent of the Artnewsletter. He Introduced Sister Wendy Beckett to the BBC for whom he worked as a consultant on market programmes such as the Relative Values series (1991). He also worked as an art market consultant for Channel 4 News.
Gleadell was on the original advisory committee for the 20th Century British Art Fair in 1988, where he has served ever since as it changed its name to the 20/21 British Art Fair, and now British Art Fair.