Circle Auction is pleased to present Modern & Contemporary: Art and Design, a curated sale of postwar and contemporary works. Highlights include paintings by Peter Max, Wilbur Niewald, Jacob Collins, Donald Jurney, and Robert Sudlow, alongside Archie Scott Gobber, Stan Herd, and Philomene Bennett. The auction features ceramics by Marguerite Wildenhain, Paul Soldner, and Ken Ferguson, plus design by Charles & Ray Eames, Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen, and Le Corbusier, Jeanneret & Perriand, with prints by Lichtenstein and Frankenthaler.
Circle Auction is proud to offer an outstanding collection of lithographs by artist Thomas Hart Benton, assembled by the late Dr. Clarence R. Decker, the president of the University of Kansas City from 1938-1953. Under Decker's tenure in that position, he helped to grow the university many times over, and he played an instrumental role in its accreditation. Decker created a program inviting visiting artists including Benton. Creekmore Fath's catalogue raisonne of Benton prints notes that Decker commissioned the lithograph "Prayer Meeting" (1949), circulated by the UMKC bookstore.