Painting is about the beauty of space and the power of containment.
Sam Francis
As consummate patrons of the arts, Acey and Bill Wolgin did not just live with the art that they collected—they lived alongside the artists who made it. Through their generous support of both individual artists as well as institutions they cherished, the Wolgins became widely celebrated collectors known for their friendships with artists—including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Arman, and Robert Rauschenberg—that were sustained, not least, by legendary parties thrown at their Philadelphia apartment.
Bill Wolgin, who practiced as a urologist, met Acey through her brother with whom he attended medical school. The pair married and made strong roots in Philadelphia—indeed, the Wolgins may be credited for having a significant role in elevating the City of Brotherly Love to the cultural destination that it is today. In the 1960s, Acey was a founding member of the Arts Council at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association, which helped spark the city’s contemporary art scene. In 1974, Acey became one of the first women elected to the board of the Philadelphia Art Museum, where she served as a trustee and trustee emeritus for the rest of her life. When Robert Indiana’s LOVE stamp was released at that museum, Acey’s birthday party doubled as the event after-party. Among the attendees was the artist Arman, who absconded with a piece of the LOVE stamp-themed cake in order to seal it in resin.
The Wolgins would later relocate to Boca Raton, where they became actively involved in the Boca Raton Museum of Art and eventually funded the Wolgin Education Center. After returning to Philadelphia, Bill Wolgin would become involved in the Woodmere Art Museum as a trustee, helping to guide the institution’s expansion. Works from the Wolgin Collection are now held in all three of the institutions where they became involved, including Yves Klein’s Portrait Relief I: Arman at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fletcher Benton’s Donut with Balls and Half Moon at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, and a group of large-scale sculptures by Sam Maitin at the Woodmere Art Museum.
Surrounded by his parents’ collection from a young age, Richard Wolgin recalls meeting many of the artists whose works he knew intimately—especially memorable was the flaming red hair of Jeanne-Claude when she and Christo dropped in one weekend. (When they weren’t celebrating together, the Wolgins kept correspondences with many of their artist-friends, who sent postcards and, sometimes, drawings.) As kids, Richard and his sister would, naturally, delight in playing with one of Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures. When Richard was twelve years old, Acey gave him his first work: Roy Lichtenstein’s CRAK!, which he affixed to his bedroom wall with thumb tacks—inadvertently bringing the work back into the realm of mass media and pop cultural detritus that so inspired Lichtenstein.
The works featured in The Acey and Bill Wolgin Collection represent a life lived through, and for, art—“It’s not just buying something to hang on the wall,” says Richard, “it’s a piece of their lives, that are now part of our lives.”
Sam Francis 1923–1994
Native Californian painter and printmaker Sam Francis is most noted for his use of dynamic forms saturated with intense color amid spaces of white. Francis studied medicine and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, but joined the US Air Force in 1943. He first began painting during a prolonged hospitalization for spinal tuberculosis and, upon his return to the United States, he pursued his art education at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and then again at U.C. Berkeley.
Francis’s early works were strongly influenced by both Abstract Expressionism and French Impressionism, compelling him to move to Paris in 1950. Francis remained in France for ten years, quickly earning himself a reputation as a “tâchiste” (meaning “stain” or “splash”) painter who preferred to accentuate brilliant color through painterly strokes. This time abroad was highly productive and successful, and his works were featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art as well as the Bienal de São Paolo.
In 1961, Francis returned to California where he lived and worked for the remainder of his life. In addition to contemporary Western influences, he would also adopt an interplay of negative space and bursts of color that can be largely attributed to his study of Japanese calligraphy. Francis’s work has been exhibited in multitudes of international galleries and museums, including the Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, Japan; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
Auction Results Sam Francis
