A DEPARTURE FROM TRADITION – IRASCIBLE ART FEATURED IN SHANNON’S FALL AUCTION

MILFORD, CONN. - Shannon’s recently announced their next major cataloged auction of Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture to be held at their Milford, Connecticut gallery on Thursday, September 17, 2020 at 6PM EDT.

Leading the 200+ lot auction are 22 lots of Abstract Expressionist works from the Collection of Jeanne and Carroll Berry. Among these lots are works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Hans Hoffman, Willem DeKooning and Adolph Gottlieb.

In 1950, Gottlieb led an organized boycott against the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition “American Painting Today.” In a letter, drafted by Gottlieb, the undersigned artists rejected submission to the Metropolitan’s jurors on the grounds that the selection committee “does not warrant any hope that a just proportion of advanced art will be included.”

Eighteen painters and eleven sculptors signed the letter first published by the New York Times. The group caused a stir in the art world and beyond. The New York Herald Tribune responded in an editorial under the headline “The Irascible Eighteen”. Critic, Clement Greenberg wrote extensively about the group calling them “the Irascibles.” Life magazine contacted the artists to have their group portrait taken-- a portrait that has become the defining image of the Abstract Expressionists.

The Jeanne and Carroll Berry Collection, assembled with great care over the past 30 years, includes works by sixteen of the original “Irascible Eighteen.” The Berrys knew “advanced art” when they saw it and collected works by these leading Abstract Expressionists artists ahead of the trend.

In 2017 the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia featured the works in an exhibition titled “Advanced and Irascible: Abstract Expressionism from the Collection of Jeanne and Carroll Berry.” Shannon’s will offer 22 works from the collection of Abstract Expressionist artists. The catalog will feature a dedicated section documenting the Jeanne and Carroll Berry Collection.

For more information about the September 17th auction, or to order a catalog, contact us at info@shannons.com or 203-877-1711.