This collection was originally purchased in 1987, and early 1988 when the Dealer returned from London with more funds to capitalize on the opportunity. (Now there’s confidence for you!) The gallery was situated in Manhattan NYC.
SoHo was a less than salubrious area in the first half of the 20th Century. By the 1960’s, it’s rundown warehouses with high ceilings and large iron framed windows, combined with the cheap rent, became the ideal place for an artists’ colony. Home to a new breed of “Pop Artists”, galleries and studios were the latest “Avant Garde”. Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and others, worked, played and lived their lives there.
Although unidentified, the gallery was said to be small, low key and a discreet place for artists to dispose of excess work that was not required by the likes of Leo Castelli. Planners drawers and piles of loose sketches filled the space. This was a house of disposal. It probably accounts for the thousands of preparatory sketches and drawings missing on the Raisonnes and websites of the Pop Art foundations, long after the deaths of the creators of their fortunes. Roy Lichtenstein alone, produced over four and a half thousand works in his life time. It makes complete sense that a small gallery would facilitate discrete sales for these artists. Lichtenstein was a meticulous draftsman and his “process” demanded many scribbles, sketches, and compositions before a final work was created.
Why cash sales would be made outside of an artist’s exhibiting gallery, who knows? After all, they were the golden eighties, and Studio 54 was not an inexpensive night out!