Alfonso Ossorio
Filipino-American heir who bankrolled Pollock, collected Art Brut, and encrusted his own work with everything.
Alfonso Ossorio was born in Manila in 1916 into a sugar fortune, was educated in England and at Harvard, and became a central and unusually generous figure in the New York school — he bought Pollock's work when nobody else would, lent him money, and gave Dubuffet's Art Brut collection a home at The Creeks, his East Hampton estate, for ten years. His own work moved from Surrealist-inflected religious painting through poured abstraction to the Congregations: dense assemblages encrusted with glass eyes, bone, driftwood, mirror, plastic and costume jewellery on board. He died in 1990.
A market that has strengthened considerably as the circle around Pollock and Dubuffet has been reassessed, but which remains specialist. The Congregations are the signature works and are also serious conservation objects — many different materials, many adhesives, and components that detach, so losses are common and a condition report needs to be detailed. The earlier wax-resist works on paper and the poured paintings are more straightforward. The Ossorio Foundation holds the archive. Provenance frequently runs through the artist's own circle, which is well documented.
If you own a work by Alfonso Ossorio
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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