Neue Auctions, Cleveland’s newest auction house, will conduct its Spring Fine Art and Antique Auction on March 23-24, 2019, with absentee and internet live bidding through LiveAuctioneers. The online-only auction consists of 585 lots of fine art, including sculptures and paintings as well as antiques, silver, rugs, rare books, maps, and antiquities. 

The individuals behind this venture have been at the forefront of the Cleveland art scene for decades, but now they are working together as a team for the first time. The collaboration consists of Cynthia Colling Maciejewski, co-founder of Cleveland-based Aspire Auctions; Ron Greenwald and Ricardo Bernabe of Greenwald Antiques; and Bridget McWilliams of Wolfs art gallery in Cleveland. This will be their fourth auction since launching last September. 

A highlight of the Asian category is a Japanese Imperial silver bowl made by Hirata Shigemitsu VII around the turn of the 20th century. The large bowl has double-walled construction, set on a splayed foot and topped with a barbed rim that is finished in a rolled lip. The exterior wall hammered with bold designs of large paulownia leaves around the body below vines and blossoms around the neck. The large bowl bears the crest of the Imperial Household and is signed on the underside by Shigemitsu. It is expected to sell for $20,000 to 30,000. 

Of the dozen or so bronze sculptures in the auction, the finest is Anthony Caro’s reclining Woman with Pearls. The 4-1/2-foot-long work is a one of a series of seven unique bronzes Caro created in 1986 when he was at the Triangle Workshop, a two-week artist’s residency he founded in 1982 in upstate New York. The workshop brought together emerging and mid-career artists from the United States, Canada, and the UK. 

Caro began his career as an assistant to Henry Moore, taught for two years at Bennington College in Vermont and at St. Martin’s School of Art, London, from 1953-1981. He has had numerous museum exhibitions including a one-man retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1975, the Tate, London in 1991 and others. Woman with Pearls will be included in the forthcoming Anthony Caro catalogue raisonne currently being prepared by Barford Sculptures, London (est. $50,000-80,000). 

Pottery includes a nearly 3-foot tall Chinese Tang Dynasty saddled camel that has an arching neck, positioned as if it were bellowing. The 1,100-year-old artifact has traces of pigment (est. $8,000-10,000).

Cleveland artist Joseph B. O’Sickey (1918-2013) is represented by two oil on canvas paintings, Scarlet Maples with Pink Cloth (60 by 70 inches) and Studio Interior with Mirror (22 by 28 inches). During the 1960s and 1970s, O’Sickey had six solo shows at Jacques Seligmann Galleries in New York City, and his work was in the Kennedy Galleries in New York for more than 20 years.

The glass artistry of Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941-) is featured in a freeform bowl from his Macchia (Italian for “spot”) series. Created in 2006, the speckled piece is brightly colored Desert Yellow. It comes with its original black and clear Lucite stand and display box, paperwork and original packing box (est. $3,000-5,000).

Designer accessories in the auction include Italian-made leather items from the Swan Collection. An amber alligator skin large shoulder bag lined in calfskin. The front of the bag features a crown adorned with clear and amber Swarovski crystals.

The auction offers 10 fine Oriental rugs, the largest a room-size antique Turkish Kayserie carpet, handwoven with tree, leaf garland and floral motifs in an allover pattern, 10 by 16 feet (est. $2,000-4,000). The front of the bag features a crown adorned with clear and amber Swarovski crystals.

Two nice Navajo rugs having geometric patterns in shades of brown and beige will also cross the auction block on day two (est. $400-1,000 each).

For additional information on any item in the sale, contact Neue Auctions at (216) 245-6707.