Wright Auction

As a medical doctor caught between converging Soviet and German forces in her home country of Lithuania during World War II, Dr. Martyna Miskinis fled the country eventually emigrating to the United States in 1949. Dr. Miskinis was awarded her medical degree during the first year of the War in 1939. In an effort to escape the military occupation of her home country and aid those in need, she worked as a doctor in European refugee camps in Germany.  Her humanitarian efforts led her to Dresden, where she narrowly escaped the infamous bombing that would contribute to the end of the War. Four years later, she would move to Detroit, become accredited to practice medicine in the United States, and open her own family practice.

If the early life of Dr. Miskinis was contextualized by the turmoil of Europe, her later life can be characterized by the devotion to her family life, patients and the arts. She was an avid member and supporter of both the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Smithsonian Museum’s Archives of American Art. Dr. Miskinis also purchased art from local galleries and dealers, amassing an expansive collection of works by contemporary artists. 

The Miskinis collection privileges formal intensity while maintaining a refreshing light-heartedness. Warhol’s portraits and Flowers have long been lauded as central to American Pop, a movement that favored the repetition of popular images saturated in bright hues. Alex Katz’s Pink Petunia #1 appears to be a simple rendering of a flower, but unfolds as a complicated play on perspective. The color and line quality of the waving figure in the rare Calder gouache is so direct that the viewer is easily distracted from the nuanced line-play that traces the features of the protagonist. Finally, an early Michelangelo Pistoletto mirror similarly captures the viewer in a visual double entendre, both as actor and audience.

A highlight in the provenance of the collection is the J.L. Hudson Gallery, the modern art wing of the eponymous department store. Headed by Albert Landry, a former director at Galerie Villand-Galanis and gallery owner in New York, the department store exhibited works by Andy Warhol, Emil Nolde, Albert Giacometti, Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Hans Hoffman and many other important artists. At a time when department stores were experimenting with bringing high art to their audience, Landry’s selections were remarkably prescient.   

If a collection is a representation of the collector, then Dr. Miskinis made every effort to celebrate the joy of life in her home. We are deeply thankful to her children for introducing us to the legacy of their mother.