Above all, it is a matter of loving art, not understanding it.
Fernand Léger
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.”
Fernand Léger 1881–1955
Fernand Léger was born on February 4, 1881 in the small rural town of Argentan in northwestern France. Léger showed early talent as an artist and, at the age of nineteen, moved to Paris, where he supported himself as an architectural draftsman. While in Paris, he applied to the École des Beaux-Arts but was rejected and attended the Paris School of Decorative Arts instead. This proved to be a formative moment given the variety of media that Léger would use later in his artistic career.
In 1907, Léger had his first major exposure to the work of Paul Cézanne at the retrospective held at the Salon d'Automne. Cézanne's use of color and creation of three-dimensional shapes on canvas were major influences on Léger. The early Cubist works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque also did much to shape Léger's burgeoning aesthetic. By 1911, Léger had developed his own form of Cubism that was distinguished by the use of cylindrical shapes. The art critic Louis Vauxcelles described Léger's unique style as "Tubism."
Léger served in the French Army in World War I from 1914 to 1917. This had a major impact on him artistically as his subject matter turned to "mechanical" figures and objects, including fellow soldiers, airplanes, and pieces of machinery. After World War I, Léger's oeuvre went beyond paintings and drawings into the realm of films, set designs, and murals. In the 1930s, Léger made his first trip to the United States. In 1935, he was the focus of a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City that also traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago. Following the onset of World War II, Léger moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1940 to teach at Yale University.
In the postwar years, Léger returned to France and worked as both an artist and teacher. During the 1950s, he created work in a variety media, including tapestry, ceramics, stained glass, and mosaics. Léger died in 1955 outside of Paris in Gif-sur-Yvette, France. Today Fernand Léger is considered one of the greatest artists of the 20th century and a key progenitor of modern art. His works are in almost every major museum in the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Fernand Léger Museum in Biot, France.
Auction Results Fernand Léger
