A recently rediscovered work by Georgia O’Keeffe, Alligator Pear in White Dish, sold for $225,150 at Skinner Auctions recently, well above its estimate high of $150,000

Included in her Catalogue Raisonne, Volume II, and evidenced by a photograph her husband Alfred Stieglitz took, the painting had been considered lost since the mid-1950s when it was last known to have been purchased by a Cape Cod collector. The work is representative of O’Keeffe’s early work, describing “nature in her simplest appearance” and is indicative of O’Keeffe’s artistic relationship with modernist painter Arthur Dove.

Another anticipated gem of the January 29th sale and veiled from public view since the sixties was an Arnaldo Pomodoro sculpture, Rotante primo sezionale.  From the collection of Melvin B. Nessel of Boston, MA, founder of the Fenton Show Corporation of Cambridge, the present work is one of two artist proofs outside the edition of two. This three-dimensional sphere was somewhat of a transitional piece for Pomodoro; the disintegration of form is more geometrical than in the other works.  This work estimated at the high end at $150,000 brought $468,000, a  price Skinner called very strong for the only artist proof of this title offered thus far.

One more featured treasure is a long-hidden away Yves Tanguy, Sans Titre. From the estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (née Braman) Grasso, the piece is illustrative of Tanguy’s early American work, similar to the art he produced in Europe, but with a more saturated palette.