Wright Auction

Dina and Jerry Wind made an agreement that their collecting of art would be a partnership. As a married couple, they not only respected each other’s different tastes and points of view, but also cherished the process of growing from each other’s unique perspectives on what makes a work of art worthy of being owned. 

Dina was a sculptor of welded metals, and her intellectual process in collecting was to explore and get under the skin of another artist’s working methods. It may be considered old-fashioned today, but she wanted an artist to be a virtuoso—to be the best at what they did—and she needed to understand the unique journey in their practice. She sometimes started by asking herself where the work of art, quite literally, began. I recall the experience of admiring together a multifaceted work in welded steel by Robinson Fredenthal and Dina’s determination to figure out which two planes out of about twenty he had put together first. How did he start? She herself was a welder, and there was an expressionism in the way she joined her metals; she was never haphazard, but there was an insistent honesty in the process of her constructions. She wanted her viewers to see evolution, process, and change, and she looked for this in the work of others.

Jerry is a business guru and an esteemed professor (now emeritus) of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. All of his students know his mantra: experiment! Marketing is not a rational science, so finding the right path or arriving at the golden solution almost always requires creative thinking, pushing boundaries, launching a test, or trying something “out of the box.” Ordinary thought, like a work of art that relies on convention, would not impress Jerry. Recently we admired together a work by Steve Donegan, an artist who electroplates objects and fiddles with the science. The unexpected appearance of the sculpture and the odd way it held the wall and cast shadows appealed to Jerry.

The Winds can be thought of as two distinct individuals who, under the safe umbrella of their partnership, collected together. Every work in the auction had to satisfy two sets of high standards, even while occupying common ground. Jerry and Dina were an outgoing couple with flair, and there are many works in the collection that reflect their elegance and panache. Louise Nevelson’s Mirror Shadow V (1985) is a tour-de-force wall relief that balances on a corner, a masterpiece of composition and equilibrium. In this, I think of Dina, who, as a sculptor who often made freestanding works, understood how hard it is to compose big and theatrical sculptures that balance and feel centered. For Jerry, Nevelson’s great work expresses the artist’s curiosity about unusual materials, and she seems to manage the strong diagonals of her silhouette by venturing someplace new. It took Nevelson years of practice to take these risks.

Another work in the auction by an artist who takes risks is Truth, Justice, and the Comics (1990) by Elizabeth Murray. Baroque in its consumption of space with tubular arms, it is a painting that barrels into the realm of sculpture. Dina would have known that only an artist at the height of her powers could fight it out like this. And for Jerry, it seems as much an experiment today as is must have been in 1990.

This is an auction of works brought together by a unique pairing of minds. Don’t miss the experience of seeing the exhibition when it is on view. Every successful bidder will enjoy years of pleasure in the responsiveness of this art to dynamic thought.