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Curators' Picks: March 18 Prints & Multiples Showcase Auction
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Frank's Picks
Frank Hettig | Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art, Dallas
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Laurie Simmons’s Walking Petit Four feels like a tiny dessert that decided to get up and dance. It’s playful and a little strange in the best way. By putting elegant legs on something so small and decorative, she turns it into a character with attitude and presence. That’s what I love about her work — she makes ordinary things come alive and quietly flip the script on how we see them. Pieces from this time have shown up in major museums, and it makes sense. This one feels like a small, surreal performance about confidence, femininity, and the courage to step out on your own.
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Jennifer Bartlett’s 6PM, from Air: 24 Hours feels to me like a quiet, thoughtful pause in a day — a moment where light and atmosphere hang in the balance. With its layered etching, aquatint, drypoint, and scraped color on handmade paper, you can almost feel the air shifting at that hour, like a deep breath between busy moments. Bartlett’s work always blends structure and emotion — she tracks time and place with a calm, steady gaze, and this print is part of that powerful Air: 24 Hours series that turned the simple passing of time into something poetic and resonant. It’s a piece that reminds you how rich and layered ordinary hours can be.
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Holly's Picks
Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art, San Francisco
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I selected two works whose scale and appearance differ dramatically from the computer screen. These look incredible in person.
Sol LeWitt’s Two Cubes with Colors Superimposed (Blue) (1988) features two geometric cube forms set against a deep, dark ground that heightens their saturated red and green planes. The crisp edges and controlled color create a careful balance between flat design and spatial illusion. On screen, the work feels compact and graphic. In person, its scale and intensity are far more powerful. The sheet floats within the beautiful frame. It is ready to hang.
Red Grooms’s Los Aficionados (1990) is a vibrant three-dimensional lithograph with animated figures at a bullfight, constructed to stand upright in space. Grooms turns printmaking into a freestanding sculptural object with cut and layered elements that create depth and movement. Online, it reads as a lively image. In person, its scale conveys an energy that cannot be captured digitally.
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Desiree's Picks
Consignment Director, Prints & Multiples, Beverly Hills
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Vitali’s iconic beach scenes are among his most coveted works, and multi-panel compositions of this scale are especially desirable, offering collectors a timeless meditation on leisure, memory, and the beauty of collective human experience. This diptych of the Sagamore hotel in Miami was shot from an elevated vantage point, inviting viewers to study individual gestures while absorbing the choreography of the crowd as a whole. It reminds me of the sunny pool days at West Hollywood hotels that I often frequent and it is such a fun and dynamic piece!
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In this series of 10 works, Martin’s prints carry a profound emotional resonance, embodying her lifelong pursuit of innocence, balance, and transcendent calm. The complete set is particularly compelling. Her editions are highly sought after for their rarity and their close relationship to her major canvases, and cohesive groups from this pivotal period are increasingly scarce. With her enduring institutional stature and strong market history, a set such as this offers both historical significance and lasting collector appeal.
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Rebecca's Picks
Rebecca Lax | Consignment Director, Prints & Multiples, New York
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Alfred Leslie (1927–2023) began his career as an Abstract Expressionist painter and, at 32, co-directed the landmark 1959 film Pull My Daisy with Robert Frank, featuring Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky.
Folded Constance Pregnant, his first published etching, depicts his wife Constance in the full presence of her pregnancy. Printed and published at Graphicstudio, the work exceeds the size of any of its presses. Leslie used three copper plates to create the monumental image, folding the full sheet twice so it could pass through the press three times. Other impressions of this edition are held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. This rare print may be presented as an installation work, mounted with 3–4 magnets along the top edge to allow it to drape nearly to the floor on a vertical wall (purchase magnets online at TALAS).
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A rare print by Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) showing her more classic figurative rendering of a young woman. This print edition was made in lithographic crayon on plate, printed at the Derri?re L’?toile printshop. This is a special example of the artist’s hand in possibly a life drawing session, capturing the figure leaning out towards the viewer over the top of a chair with a draped shawl. The image is printed on a grey toned BFK Rives paper called ‘Newsprint’. The subdued color ground softens the image and enhances its tonal modeling. The result is simple, classic, and calm, yet quietly compelling in its intimacy.
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Find these and other outstanding modern and contemporary prints in Heritage's Prints & Multiples Showcase Auction. The auction's session is 1:00 PM Central Time, Wednesday, March 18.
Sincerely,
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Frank Hettig
Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art
Dallas
FrankH@HA.com
(214) 409-1157
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Holly Sherratt
Vice President, Modern & Contemporary Art,
San Francisco
HollyS@HA.com
(415) 548-5921
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Desiree Pakravan
Consignment Director,
Prints & Multiples,
Beverly Hills
DesireeP@HA.com
(310) 492-8621
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Rebecca Lax
Consignment Director,
Prints & Multiples,
New York
BeckyL@HA.com
(212) 486-3736
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