Art Basel: Miami Beach, FL. December, 2008. The image above shows a two-sided graphite drawing by Willem De Kooning, a relief by Robert Mallory, and Robert S. Neuman’s Barcelona Triptych.
The Allan Stone Gallery, booth H3, exhibits Robert S. Neuman, Barcelona Triptych, 1959, at Art Basel Miami Beach. The Allan Stone Gallery, founded in 1960, is the leading authority in American postwar Abstract Expressionism, including Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, John Graham, and Joseph Cornell. The Allan Stone Gallery focused their 2008 booth on first and second generation abstract expressionism. Along with the acclaimed AbEx artists listed above, the Allan Stone Gallery selected works by Norman Bluhm, Michael Goldberg, Robert Motherwell and Robert S. Neuman. Barcelona Triptych, 1959, is Robert S. Neuman’s first painting to be exhibited at Art Basel, Miami Beach. The Allan Stone Gallery had a successful show, selling many works from their booth, including the Robert S. Neuman Barcelona Triptych for a record price. Barcelona Triptych, 1959, is the sum of Robert S. Neuman’s formal education at the California College of Art and Crafts and time spent in Barcelona, Spain on a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956. When the triptych was painted, Neuman had returned to the United States, settling in Boston, MA, where he painted and taught at Massachusetts College of Art. Later, in the early 1960’s, Robert S. Neuman taught at Harvard University where he met Allan Stone, founder of the Allan Stone Gallery, who became a collector of his work. The majority of Neuman’s work from the 1950’s is in private collections. With the exception of Black Painting, 1952, gifted to the The Fogg Museum in 2003; Small Black Painting, 1956, at the Rose Museum at Brandeis University; and Neue Weinsteige, 1960, at the Carnegie Museum of Art.