Alfonso Ossorio valuation
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.
What a work by Alfonso Ossorio is worth
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Bio
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.
At a glance
- Born
- 2 August 1916, Manila
- Died
- 5 December 1990, East Hampton
- Movement
- Abstract Expressionism
More on Wikipedia.
The Angry Christ, Dubuffet and The Art of Assemblage
In 1950 Ossorio painted The Angry Christ, a sixty-square-metre mural for the church of St Joseph the Worker at Victorias in Negros Occidental, designed by the Czech architect Antonin Raymond. The same year he went to Paris to meet Jean Dubuffet, whose interest in art brut opened new directions for his own work.
He was one of nearly 140 artists, Dubuffet among them, in the Museum of Modern Art's The Art of Assemblage in 1961. He died in New York in 1990; half his ashes were scattered at The Creeks and the rest buried in Green River Cemetery in East Hampton.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
