Sotheby’s has snagged the collection of publishing magnates Harry N. Abrams and his son Robert E. Abrams, and will offer its contents this fall. Harry founded Harry N. Abrams Publishing, and together with Robert, they later established Abbeville Press. Amassed over some seven decades and featuring an array of star Pop artists, the collection is estimated to total as much as $16.3 million. 

The family collected principally from the 1930s to the 1980s. Many of the works were bought directly from the artists and are coming to market for the first time, after having appeared in numerous museum exhibitions. When Harry N. Abrams died, his New York Times obituary indicated that he was “a pioneer in the popularizing and publishing of quality art books” who “combined a flair for merchandising art books and a serious responsibility for both the quality of the reproductions and the text that accompanied them.”

Harry N. and Robert Abrams. Courtesy Sotheby’s.

The sale’s top lot is Isamu Noguchi’s sculpture Study for Energy Void (1971), acquired directly from the artist and tagged at up to $5 million. Visitors to the Abrams home saw this work immediately upon entering; it explores Noguchi’s central concept of an “energy void,” which would solidify the concepts of form and emptiness as one. Art historian Sam Hunter, who authored a book on Noguchi for Abbeville, pronounced the energy void “among his most refined and hauntingly beautiful monumental forms.”

Among the other highlights is an Alex Katz canvas, Joan (1974), showing a fashion designer and friend of the family, a rare example of a nude portrait by the artist. Estimated at up to $2 million, the painting was acquired from Marlborough Gallery the year it was made. Tagged at up to $1 million is Fernando Botero’s El Cardenal (1977), showing a portly clergyman in red lying on the grass. 

Alex Katz, Joan (1974). Courtesy Sotheby’s.

Bob Thompson’s Nativity Scene (c. 1964) was also acquired from the artist and riffs in the artist’s distinctive style on the classical tableau, with an angel holding an infant.

A Marisol sculpture, The Bicycle Race (1962–63), shows two riders and is estimated at up to $350,000. 

Marisol, The Bicycle Race (1962–63). Courtesy Sotheby’s.

“Like his father before him, Bob was fearless, boundless, yet brilliantly discerning in his eye for beauty,” said his widow Cynthia Vance Abrams in a statement. “It informed everything in his world. He also loved talking to artists and could do so for hours.”

It so happened that legendary dealer Sidney Janis’s gallery had opened in 1948 across the street in New York from where the Abrams offices would be located. Janis showed European Modernists as well as American Abstract Expressionists, and organizing the first large survey of Pop art in 1962. The Abrams family would patronize his gallery along with dealers Leo Castelli, Virginia Dwan, and Eleanor Ward, owner of Stable Gallery. 

The collectors befriended artists like Chryssa, Jim Dine, Andy Warhol, and Tom Wesselman in the new earliest days of the Pop art movement. Their collecting acuity was recognized when New York’s trailblazing Jewish Museum organized a 1966 exhibition based on their holdings.

The Abrams home, featuring works by Bob Thompson, John Wesley, Heinz Mack, and Arnaldo Pomodoro. Courtesy Sotheby’s.

Some of the publishers’ best-known projects include an oversized volume of Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling frescoes (1980), which was presented to the Pope in a private audience, and a reissue of John J. Audubon’s 1827–38 volume Birds of America (1985). Cynthia Vance Abrams would leave her mark in publishing as well, publishing the children’s classics How Artists See (1996) and Flip-O-Saurus (2010). 

Selected works will be on offer at a live auction on September 27 in New York, with others in an online sale from September 20–30, and others appearing in auctions throughout the fall. Works from the collection will go on view at the Sotheby’s Los Angeles showroom from September 4–8, and in New York from September 21–26.