The Collection of Mark Isaacson and Greg Nacozy includes over two-hundred works from one of the most significant figures in mid-century collecting. Mark established the influential Fifty/50 gallery in New York in 1981 (later partnering with Mark McDonald and Ralph Cutler in 1983), which shaped the tastes and collecting habits of many and brought furniture, decorative arts and jewelry from the 1930s, 40s and 50s to the forefront of the market at a time when they were largely overlooked.
Fifty/50’s and Mark’s legacy is most closely associated with bringing Italian art glass to the United States (Mark even advised the MET on their Italian glass collection) and raising the profile of mid-century furniture and American studio jewelry and ceramics; iconic examples of each are represented in this auction, including an early Rudder Stool by Isamu Noguchi, Charlotte Perriand’s and Pierre Jeanneret’s Bahut No. 2, a Gerrit Rietveld Zig-Zag chair, pottery by Edwin and Mary Scheier and Fausto Melotti, and Venini glassworks.
The most exciting aspects of this auction are the more intimate ones—the works from Mark's and Greg's personal collection that speak to Mark's eclectic taste, his boundless curiosity and sensitivity toward objects and art, and how generous he was in sharing his interests with others and letting them share with him. Standouts include several works by Robert Mapplethorpe—who was close friends with Mark, photographed several Fifty/50 catalogs and got many of the ceramics in his photographs from the gallery—the ecstatic wood construction Wild Plant by Leo Amino, a painting by Ralston Crawford of a spectacularly minimalist skyscraper façade, and photographic works by Man Ray, Edward Weston, Lynn Davis and Dorothea Lange.
This auction also features many works that tie together the thread of Mark’s collecting practices, going beyond the downtown New York sensibilities of the 1980s and showing the scope of eras and cultures that interested him; the sgraffito incisions on a 1940s Scheier vase echo the geometric features of a Senufo Kpeliye'e mask, the entrancing and complex shadows of a grain elevator in a photograph by Ralston Crawford contrast with the severe plainness of a New York City step-back building captured by Walker Evans, and the radical gestures of gay image making are seen in the works of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus and Robert Loughlin. One of the artists in this sale, George Dureau, a photographer from New Orleans (where Greg is also from) who greatly influenced Mapplethorpe early in his career, perhaps best captures the spirit of this collection, saying about his own work:
“I live a warm, involved, humanist sort of life. There are lots of people passing through it. I have exciting experiences and learn things about people. They always go into my art. I cannot have an experience and it not go into my art.”
Fifty/50 gallery reshaped the collecting market during its twelve-year existence, closing in 1993 after Mark passed away from AIDS; his partner Greg has cared for the collection since. The Collection of Mark Isaacson and Greg Nacozy offers an opportunity to see a short but impactful life lived through an enthusiasm for art and design, one that inspired many to see and appreciate objects and live with them as fully as Mark did.
Margaret De Patta 1903–1964
More than any other jewelry designer of the twentieth century, Margaret De Patta unified the visual theories of early progressive movements with mid-century design sensibilities to create jewelry that, while seemingly minimal, is built upon studied, complex relationships of light, form and space. De Patta was one of the first jewelry designers to elevate nontraditional materials beyond their humble origins—metal elements were layered to create depth, convex and faceted quartz added an entrancing range of optical effects and overall compositions were meticulous, as though they were clear, clean answers to conundrums only De Patta could see. As a student of the New Bauhaus and its populist spirit in the 1940s, De Patta also led the charge on the debate over mass-producing art jewelry, arguing that good design should be accessible.
De Patta was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1903 and grew up in San Diego. She trained as a sculptor and painter at the California School of Fine Arts and in 1926, she received a scholarship to attend the Arts Students League in New York. There, she encountered the European avant-garde artistic theories that would influence her jewelry work to come. In 1929, she moved back to California, settling in San Francisco and began making jewelry (one of her first pieces was her very own wedding ring). She apprenticed with local jewelers and explored her own artistic voice throughout the 1930s. From 1940 to 1941, she studied with László Moholy-Nagy at the New Bauhaus in Chicago and was greatly influenced by the artistic and societal ideals of the school and her mentors.
In 1946, already well-regarded in the arts community, her work was featured in the MoMA's exhibition Modern Handmade Jewelry, alongside works by Alexander Calder. In the 1950s, she and her husband, Eugene Bielawski, who was also a metalsmith, embarked on scaling production of her designs to make them more accessible and affordable, but they struggled with the business realities of production. Though De Patta designed some spectacular works in this era, she ultimately went back to creating unique and commissioned pieces that were more technically challenging and creatively fulfilling.
De Patta passed away in Oakland (where she lived and had a studio) in 1964; she receveied her first major retrospective in 2012 at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Her work is held in institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum of Contemporary Art, who holds her archives and the largest collection of her work.
