NEW YORK CITY — Swann Galleries’ spring auction of African American art on March 31 featured many scarce and significant postwar and contemporary artworks, including 28 lots from a private collection. The sale totaled $3.6 million and was led by Hughie Lee-Smith’s (1915-99) “Aftermath,” a beautifully painted but stark urban scene rendered in oil on linen canvas, circa 1960, which beat its $180,000 high estimate to sell for a record $365,000, including buyer’s premium. Measuring 30 by 46 inches and signed in oil lower right, the painting had provenance to the collection of the Johnson Publishing Company, Chicago, with the label on the frame back. An excellent example of Hughie Lee-Smith’s mid-career painting, “Aftermath” epitomizes his unique view of urban decay, a vision of a modern, existential landscape with Surrealist undertones. Depicting a crumbling façade with three bright pink and yellow balloons in the foreground, the work suggests the recent presence of young people, alienation and a fleeting, fragile moment. Lee-Smith’s fluttering flags and a distant city on the horizon further denote an empty space. Not far behind the Hughie Lee-Smith painting at $341,000, including premium, was Ed Clark’s “Spatial Image III,” a large 1982 example of his “push-broom” abstract work in pigment on paper, which more than doubled its high estimate and set a record for a work on paper by the artist.

Watch for a further review of this sale in an upcoming issue.