: "Dora Maar" looked fantastic in her dark frame. The art world
perhaps may never know whether the presentation helped propel the
painting by Pablo Picasso to $95,216,000 at Sotheby's May 3 sale
of Impressionist and Modern art, but Eli Wilner, who supplied the
frame, is justifiably proud to be associated with the record.
"The second most expensive painting ever sold at auction,"
marveled Wilner, founder and chief executive officer of Eli
Wilner & Company, a trusted source for American and European
frames from the Nineteenth through early Twentieth Century. In a
phone interview after Picasso's "Dora Maar au chat," one of the
artist's most spectacular depictions of his lover and artistic
companion, sold to an anonymous buyer, Wilner declined to say
whether the painting and frame remained together after the
auction. "That's confidential," he said.
He did say, however, that in the past two months his firm has
loaned a total of 73 frames for both Sotheby's and Christie's to
help showcase paintings being offered in their sales. His firm
also supplied the frame for a masterpiece by famed Mexican artist
Frida Kahlo that sold for $5.6 million on May 24 at Sotheby's,
setting a new record for a Latin American work of art at auction
and for the artist at auction.
For "Dora Maar," Wilner said Sotheby's requested a loaned frame
for the painting because the auction house did not have one that
was appropriate. "They asked us to find and loan them a frame,"
he said. Wilner did have a period frame that matched the
sensibilities of the artist - a dark frame with a bit of gilding
that would set off the painting and give it an Old Master glow -
but had to cut it down several inches to accommodate Picasso's
51-by-38-inch work.
The company's ability to serve as such a resource to the auction
houses comes from its extensive inventory. According to the
company's website, Wilner's team of 20 skilled professionals,
including 10 frame conservators, have completed approximately
6,000 framing projects, including for museums, such as The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, and for the White House. "We go
around the world snapping pictures, and we have built up a
library of thousands of photos," said Wilner.
Wilner said his personal best in terms of a top price realized
for a frame is $250,000 for a Stanford White frame sold as an
object in 1997. Related to the firm's sales of frames as objects
in their own right, it recently created a division that
specializes in framing flat screen televisions.
Eli Wilner & Company is at 1525 York Avenue. For information,
212-744-6521 or www.eliwilner.com.
