The love was felt at Swann's February 14 auction of African-American Fine Art where multiple artist records were set! The sale's top lot was Barkley L. Hendricks’s 1970 life-size portrait of a disc jockey friend in Philadelphia, The Hawk, Blah, Blah Blah, depicted in oil and DayGlo on canvas, which brought $132,000. Another bold contemporary piece, William T. Williams’s Up Balls, a large abstract acrylic on canvas from 1971, brought $120,000—tying the only previous auction result for a painting by the artist (set here at Swann in February 2012).
An inspiring group of prints by the late great Elizabeth Catlett also set new auction records–two linoleum cuts, I Am the Black Woman, 1946-47, which sold for $90,000, and Sharecropper, circa 1952, for $43,200. Swann devoted a section of the sale to Catlett, which also included her green marble statue, Sister, 1971, which brought $114,000.
