Without a Second Thought: Second City Imaginings Worth a Second Look

Since its founding in 1982, Hindman Auctions has long championed the works of hometown artists and earned the distinguished reputation of being the go-to destination for the best examples by the Chicago School including, but not limited to, the Hairy Who?, the Chicago Imagists, the Monster Roster, and Midwestern Magical Realists and Surrealists. Hindman’s unparalleled expertise and dedicated passionate promotion of these important artists has pushed their respective markets to new heights and propelled many from a regional audience to a worldwide stage with international demand from collectors, setting numerous auction records along the way.

Now better together, we look forward to carrying on this tradition of supporting locally sourced material as Freeman’s | Hindman is thrilled to have one of the strongest and widest ranging selections of works to come to auction in recent years by some of the most sought after Chicago makers in our September 25th Post War and Contemporary Art auction, serving as an introduction to the uninitiated and a reminder of our market-pacing excellence to those already in the know.

2022 was a benchmark year for the Surrealist sorceress Gertrude Abercrombie led by the single-artist, single-owner sale Casting Spells: The Gertrude Abercrombie Collection of Laura and Gary Maurer at Hindman Auctions in September. This sale was followed by the record setting result of Untitled (Woman with Tethered Horse and Moon) for $437,500 in December also at Hindman, breaking our own auction record established in February of that year. The season of the Jazz Witch has continued with more impressive results since and a major retrospective, Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery, poised to open in early 2025 at the Carnegie Museum of Art traveling, thereafter, to the Colby College Museum of Art, appropriately including many superb examples placed by Hindman over the years.

It is no sleight of hand surprise that among the highlights of the upcoming sale is a spectacular example of Abercrombie’s painterly witchcraft, the aptly titled The Magician from 1957, the peak era of her powers. Under the influence of Magical Realist stylings of close friend John Wilde during this era the paint handling in this work is more precise and refined than we often see from Gertrude—depicting a raven haired stand in for the artist being levitated by the outstretched paw of a spooky black cat above a simplified version of the chaise lounge that graced the artist’s Dorchester Avenue apartment, pleasingly puzzling set pieces and performers in an eerily theatrical austere interior. Adding to the significance of this spell binding masterwork is the painting being still housed in its original frame, featuring a rarely seen original handwritten label. The label came from the famed Hyde Park fixture, the 57th Street Art Fair, where the current owner was present as a ten-year-old for the purchase of the work from Abercrombie by his father for $90—three zeros less than the high end of the current auction estimate.

Also, of note in the auction from the Chicago Surrealist circle are two compellingly complex in content and concept 1946 gouaches by Abercrombie contemporary and friendly competitor Julia Thecla, Young Lady with a Bird and The Fire. These enigmatic dreamlike narratives artistically process the horrors of World War II into mesmerizing visual intrigue and are both from the same distinguished Milwaukee collection regifted to the family by artist, bird watcher, and friend Karl Priebe, to whom Thecla had originally gifted the works. Priebe was also a dear friend of Abercrombie who makes appearances in her paintings in the form of birds and bird eggs. So, it is not a large leap to assume the landing bird in Young Lady with a Bird could also represent him or his energy.

Carrying on the tradition of fantastical and deeply personal imagery set forth by the Surrealist and Monster Roster artists before them—but with a groundbreaking youthful exuberance—were a group of School of the Art Institute of Chicago graduates who would later become known as the Imagists. They rose to prominence through a series of late 1960s raucous group shows curated by Don Baum at the Hyde Park Art Center as the short lived more specified collectives the Hairy Who?, the Nonplussed Some, and the False Image. All the artists in the movement studied under Whitney Halstead, Katherine Blackshear, and Ray Yoshida who each encouraged the investigation of non-traditional and non-western influences resulting in a unique brand of expression, dually of the moment and evergreen, generally characterized by high-key coloration, graphic intricate linework, playful humor, and low brow leaning pop culture influences.

The September sale excitingly includes a wide range of extraordinary examples by many of the brightest Imagist stars. Roger Brown is most renowned for his hallmark stylized silhouetted figures at play in emblematic snapshot vistas or voyeuristically back-lit in signature gray architecture, and we are thrilled to have a trio of works from his 1970s salad days amongst top billing in the sale. His 1973 Bus Stop is a rare three-dimensional work—at once painting and sculpture it explores a favored Brown theme of the search for the elusive American Dream through the lens of tourism with a charming nod to Hopper’s The Nighthawks in the station window. Desert Crater from 1971 is another variation on the concept. Like a passport stamp or a sticker on a suitcase, it focuses on an idealized sightseeing destinationand the ambiguous activities of the vacationing visitors. Continuing Brown’s road trip slide show is the Tramp Art framed shaped canvas of Cattle Mutilation Crucifix, made during a brief residency in New Mexico.

The piece references both the Christian cross and the intersection Brown lived at. In the tradition of his disaster paintings, it addresses the disturbing mystery of livestock dismembering. These unexplained mutilations that plagued ranches were a far cry from the wholesome romanticism of the cowboy. In a broader sense, they reflected an America at a crossroads of a fabled history and uncertain future with its dark conspiracy theories and ufology paranoia.

Also in volume and variance in the sale are seminal works by fellow Imagist and Hairy Who? coiner Karl Wirsum, led by the 1980 painted sculpture Please Don’t Get Up that depicts a whimsical red, white, and blue figure springing forth from a green chair. Executed at the same time as the artist object show Hare Toddy Kong Tamari at the Museum of Contemporary Art, this work bridges the gap between his mixed media marionettes of the 70s and his wood cutout paintings yet to come. The work displays fine carpentry and craftmanship, one of the blue-collar calling cards of the group. With a tip of the hat to H.C. Westermann—one of the Imagists' heroes—it is also worth noting that the sculpture was part of the personal collection of Phyllis Kind, the gallerist with whom all the Imagists and associated artists showed. Of a similar vintage is a group of three Alien mugshot paintings, a fascinating precursor to his later Alien Dating Service series. These interstellar villains are also importantly reverse painted on acetate, a technique Wirsum cribbed from sign painters and became identifiably part of the Imagist visual repertoire. Rounding out the Wirsum offerings are two 1970s drawings by the artist. Drawing was a daily exercise where he initially worked out ideas and his preferred form of expression. Both works captivatingly illustrate the immediacy of inception that appealed to him so.

There is always a lot to unpack in the respective works of Imagist power couple Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson. The auction includes remarkable works on paper by the husband and wife—the respective works contradictorily balance the naive and the naughty as both feature the underlying subject of underwear with virtuosic artistic execution. A 1972 specimen drawing by the aforementioned mentoring Ray Yoshida charting for classification abstracted humanoid forms gleaned from the negative spaces of comic book pages is also crucially included in the auction.

On the heels of the closing of her critically acclaimed and stunning eponymous retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, we are delighted to be offering Christina Ramberg’s 1973 etched diptych, Back to Back, presenting two oppositional prints from separate plates of headless figures in convoluted, contorted garments bound together on a single sheet, perhaps separate parts of the same fractured physical frame. As well, the auction will thrillingly include Ramberg’s uncommon and wonderful 1986 quilt Japanese Showcase, an intriguing departure from her more well-known figurative work. The decisively patterned geometric abstraction of the textile utilizes the same meticulous precision and color sensibility as her paintings. After a stop at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles this incredible comprehensive show will serendipitously make its final stop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art further reinforcing the Chicago, Philadelphia bond.

We invite you to explore the auction as an introduction to or to re-familiarize yourself with the eclectic group of exceptional artists, and discover the powerful visual threads that tie their individual visions together.

Featured images:

Lot 46 | Karl Wirsum (American, 1939-2021)
Please Don’t Get Up, 1980.
$30,000 – 50,000

Lot 75 | Gertrude Abercrombie (American, 1909-1977)
The Magician, 1956
$70,000 - 90,000
Property from the Estate of Charles H. Reich Sr., Chicago, Illinois

Lot 47 | Roger Brown (American, 1941-1997)
Bus Stop, 1973-74
$40,000 - 60,000
Property from the Collection of Joe Valerio
and Linda Searl, Chicago, Illinois

Lot 77 | Julia Thecla (American, 1896-1973)
The Fire, 1946
$8,000 - 12,000

INQUIRIES: [email protected]
VIEWING: 20 - 24 September
1550 West Carroll Avenue, Chicago, IL