'Make us an offer' Art Sale opens April 16th

Special to the World

Beginning Friday, April 16th and continuing on through Sunday, April 18th, the Reference Center for Marxist Studies is having its 19th annual art sale at its Center at 235 W. 23rd Street. On sale will be over 150 works of art from 100 artists. "Make us an offer," the Center invites its potential customers and promises to respond to every reasonable offer with a reasonable price. Nobody need go away unsatisfied. Typical prices range from $50 to $800.

Although the event is primarily meant to sell art, over the years it has also acquired a certain popularity as a show on its own merits. Many young artists, including African American artists showed here for the first time. Others, particularly realists and socially-conscious artists, were especially welcome at the Center. Among them are the Soyer brothers, Philip Reisman, Hugo Gellert, Anton Refregier, Elizabeth Catlett, and Alice Neel to name just a few.

Today on sale are works by Lev Landau, Harry Shoulberg, Eugene Salamin, Fred Ellis, Lydia Gibson, Sue Coe, Ruth Gikow, Cook Glassgold, Harry Gottlieb. In fact, nowhere else can one find so many artists who first came on the scene during the WPA Depression days.

Lithographs by William Gropper, famed as a political cartoonist for the Daily Worker, are on sale. The cartoons of Robert Minor, better known as a leader of the Communist party are available. Ideas and themes, familiar enough today, had their start back in the pre-war days when they had to fight for recognition in a hostile environment. These, of course, are the anti-fascist paintings, or paintings that pictured demonstrations of protest against unemployment, police brutality, racist discrimination, and rampant Hitlerism. These works of art, while making a political point, prove that politics and art are not enemies and need not clash, a lessons being relearned today by many young artists.

The smell of bargains in sales sponsored by the Center attract dealers as well as art lovers of limited means. And, indeed, real bargains are to be found.

The sale also offers folios of works by, for example, 25 Mexican artists, John Heartfield, Hugo Gellert, Kathe Kollwitz, Elton Fax, and others. Its collection of posters from all over the world is unique. Through them one glimpses the history of our times.

The hours are Friday April 16, from 5 to 9; Saturday, April 17, from noon to 5 P.M.; and Sunday April 18, from Noon to 5 P.M. A raffle with works by Harry Gottlieb, Eugene Salamin, Helen Silver and Walter Granville-Smith as prizes is also available. The raffle will be held Sunday, April 18.