New York Modern: The Evan Lobel Collection
Single-Owner Collection
Whenever I see a single-owner collection belonging to an art dealer coming up for sale at an auction, I always feel excited. Each dealer has a narrative and an eye that they have developed and refined throughout their career that has shaped their unique collections. Now that the design collection of Evan Lobel is coming up for sale at Bonhams, it is a great opportunity to get a view of the niched design in which he has been specialized and carved out his name — American design from the ‘60s through the ‘80s, created by, and for interior decorators. The title of the sale New York Modern is not surprising as these decorators who created the furniture in the collection, which has become highly collectible in recent decades, were based in the Big Apple and had come to shape the interiors of their time.
Since founding his gallery Lobel Modern in 1998, Lobel has become known for dealing with American design from the postwar years—particularly objects (furniture, lighting, glass) by the members of the studio movement. “I opened Lobel Modern,” he explains, “with a focus on works from the 1960s through the 1980s—a period of design opulence and originality unsurpassed to this day—feeling drawn to a handful of designers and other makers whose pieces were unique and crossed over into art.”
His gallery became the hub for studio glass and the works of Kelvin LaVerne, Karl Springer, Vladimir Kagan, and John Dickinson, among others Over the decades that followed, Lobel refined the gallery’s vision through deep, scholarly research into the most innovative American designers, participating in the growing interest in the field. His relationships with artisans, estates, and archives paired with his commitment to restoring each piece to its original brilliance helped to reintroduce these rare, sculptural works to a new generation of collectors.
Amassed over nearly three decades, Lobel’s collection brings together a refined group of New York artists and designers who helped shape the city’s post war design identity, many of whom once maintained influential Midtown Manhattan showrooms and several of whom he came into direct contact with throughout his career. The exhibition of the Lobel Collection opens at Bonhams’ new headquarters at the Steinway Building on February 27th, and the sale is scheduled for March 4th.
