“Mama, Good Samaritan” By Artist Rita Ackermann Sells For $475,000
Rita Ackermann, image via Hauser & Wirth
From November 30 to December 4, art collectors and enthusiasts from across the globe flew to South Florida for the annual Art Basel Miami Beach, a fair wherein leading galleries exhibit masterpieces created by both modern and contemporary art masters alike, as well as by emerging artists. Despite strict pandemic restrictions, this year’s affair drew hundreds of attendees, many of whom were more than willing to open their wallets and take home a few pieces.
For instance, “Sky Marshal (Spread)” by the American painter Robert Rauschenberg was sold for $1.5 million, while “Eroded Porsche 911” by Daniel Arsham was purchased by a local collector for a little over $500,000. This particular piece is a white-toned replica of a vintage car covered with a layer of epoxy resin and polymer to make it appear fossilized.
Among those that were sold at Art Basel Miami Beach was “Mama, Good Samaritan,” a canvas painting created by the renowned Hungarian-American artist Rita Ackermann. The piece was exhibited by the international fine art gallery Hauser & Wirth and purchased by an undisclosed buyer for a whopping $475,000.
“Mama, Good Samaritan” is part of Ackermann’s ongoing “Mama” series, which is currently exhbíbited at the Monaco branch of Hauser & Wirth. Launched in 2019, its other pieces include “Mama, Masked and Anonymous,” “Mama, Under the Brutal Hand of a Child,” and “Mama, the Knight of the Cave.”
Rita Ackermann
Mama, Good Samaritan, 2021
Acrylic, oil and china marker on canvas
195.6 x 167.6 cm
Rita Ackermann. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Thomas Barratt.
“The exhibition consists of paintings on canvas, which reveal her persisting interrogation of line, color, and form,” reads the Hauser & Wirth website. “In Ackermann’s new suite of ‘Mama’ paintings, repeated imagery is often combined with vivid swathes of color, giving her work an enigmatic visual component that oscillates between abstraction and figuration.”
“Works in the exhibition, including ‘Mama, Monte Carlo’ (2021) and ‘Mama, How Can You See Someone’s Soul?’ (2021) depict figures and motifs that rise to the surface of the canvas, only to dissolve and reappear elsewhere again,” the website further adds. “Lying beneath layers of oil paint are drawings in china marker or ink that are left obscured. Thick layers of impasto and oil are also vigorously applied and scraped in such works, culminating in a layering effect that is often created by chance instances and combinations of accidental gestures.”
Screenshot via Hauser & Wirth
Born in 1968, Rita Ackermann studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, Hungary before moving to the United States, where she continued her education at the New York Studio School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture. Many consider her to be one of the leading artists of her generation, thanks to her ability to create “opposing impulses of creation and destruction” that “occupy a space between the figurative and the abstract.”
Besides Hauser & Wirth, Ackermann’s work has also been featured in other art galleries – in 2018, her painting “Michael Jackson, On the Wall” was included in an exhibit in London’s National Portrait Gallery. The following year, her piece titled “American Dreams: Classic Cars and Postwar Paintings” was showcased by the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas.
American Dreams: Classic Cars and Postwar Paintings, image via mcnayart.org
Her work has also been part of group shows held at Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland and The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Ackermann may have been one of the few lucky artists whose pieces fetched hefty price tags at Art Basel Miami Beach; however, this wasn’t the first time that her work was highly sought-after. At the 2019 Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain in Paris, her canvas painting “Mama Nagyika” sold for $165,000.
Image via Hauser & Wirth
Other artworks sold by Hauser & Wirth during the fair included a large mixed-media piece titled “I Want To Be Sure You Love Me!!” Created by the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois in 2008, it was purchased by a European collector for a staggering $1.8 million.
In addition to her one-of-a-kind pieces and the high price tags that they come with, Ackermann is also known for her unique perspective on the art world.
Rita Ackermann, Photo by Tanya & Zhenya Posternak
“I don’t have a persona,” she once told an interviewer. “I believe it is the artist’s core that holds together an oeuvre. The core of the artist is like a vessel, and I’m not possessive of what my paintings deliver. For me, painting is not about egomania. That’s why I get disturbingly critical of myself when I hear my voice explaining or tracking down the process of my work in front of people.”
She added, “When I paint, I’m not thinking – only occasionally do I have a grasp of that state of ‘not thinking’ and I try to write it down. Writing is more exact for something so elusive to describe. For me, it is difficult to speak about the paintings at all. I don’t like to describe what I paint because I cannot; if I could, I wouldn’t paint it.”
With her creativity and remarkable viewpoints, it’s clear that Rita Ackermann is well on her way to becoming one of the art world’s finest painters.
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