“I think a good dealer is also a collector.”
—Rosa Esman
Rosa and Aaron Esman assembled an outstanding collection of Modern, Post-War, and Contemporary art over the course of their seventy-year marriage. The collection’s highlights mirror that of Rosa’s career as a gallerist and print publisher (which Aaron, a psychoanalyst, strongly supported), with interests in Modernism, Dada, Russian Constructivism, and American Pop Art taking center stage. Rosa got her start publishing artists’ print portfolios in the 1960s, including the New York Ten Portfolio, 1965, and Ten for Leo Castelli, 1967, which featured works by rising contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg, and helped pioneer the field of artist’s editions and multiples. Her eponymous gallery exhibited in Manhattan for over twenty years, and she was a founding partner of Ubu Gallery, which is still in operation today.
When asked about her wide artistic tastes in 2009, Rosa emphasized her love of drawing, “the quintessential bit of the art,” which can be seen across the collection, regardless of genre.
The pair bonded over gallery visits when dating in the early 1950s. While Aaron already had begun collecting by then, the first work they purchased together was a drawing by Miró, early in their marriage. Rosa recalled: ‘sometimes we look at something, and I say, “Oh, isn’t that marvelous?”’ and Aaron would respond, ‘It’s for us.’
Founded on lifelong love, the Collection of Rosa and Aaron Esman gives a unique vision of the art movements of the 20th century that shaped New York’s art scene.
Literature
Fernand Mourlot 102-103, 106-175 Patrick Cramer books 17
Catalogue Essay
Characterized by flowing spontaneity, Miró's lithographic illustrations in primary colors are perfectly paired with the eclectic verse of Tzara. This major publication took two years to produce. The driving force behind this and many other postwar European livres d'artistes was the French dealer-publisher Aimé Maeght. A trained lithographer himself, Maeght was instrumental in attracting artists to the creative possibilities of the medium and how they could be applied to book illustration. - Robert Flynn Johnson
Property from the Collection of Rosa and Aaron Esman
Parler seul (Talk Alone) (M. 102-3, 106-75, C. bks 17)
1948-1950 The portfolio of 71 lithographs, 49 in colors, with an additional lithograph on the cover with collage, on Montval laid paper, with full margins, title and justification pages, with text in French by Tristan Tzara, loose (as issued), all contained in the original paper boards and padded cardboard slipcase, both with a lithograph in colors, lacking the supplemental unsigned lithograph. each S. approx. 15 1/4 x 11 in. (38.7 x 27.9 cm) portfolio 15 1/2 x 11 3/4 x 1 3/4 in. (39.4 x 29.8 x 4.4 cm) Signed by both artists in blue ink and numbered '11' (printed) on the justification (the total edition was 250 and 3 artist's proofs with the first 50 having an additional lithograph), published by Maeght, Paris.