Lot 23: WALTER AUGUSTUS SIMON (1916 - 1979) 715 Washington Street, Greenwich Village.

WALTER AUGUSTUS SIMON (1916 - 1979)
715 Washington Street, Greenwich Village.

Oil on canvas, 1947. 902x610 mm; 36x24 inches. Signed in oil, lower left.

Provenance: from the artist's estate, Virginia. This is only the second known work of the artist to come to auction.

Illustrated: Cedric Dover, American Negro Art, 1960, plate 44; International Review of African American Art, Hampton University, 1998, volume 15, no. 2, p. 30.

Exhibited: Twenty Sixth Annual New Jersey State Exhibition, The Montclair Art Museum, 1957, with the label on the frame back.

Born in Brooklyn, Walter Augustus Simon studied art at Pratt Institute, the National Academy of Design and New York University in the 1930s. After army service during World War II and with help of the G.I. Bill, Simon re-entered NYU and earned a B.S. and M.A. in art history the late 1940s, and finally a PhD. in 1961, with a dissertation on Henry Ossawa Tanner. The same year, Simon joined the diplomatic corps of USIA (the United States Information Agency) and managed to continue an artistic career while posted abroad in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Kabul and Cairo. Simon has exhibited his work in many museum and university galleries including the High Museum of Art, the Palais de Congress, Paris, and Spelman College Museum of Art. His art work is found today in the collections of Atlanta University, the Museum of Modern Art, Cairo, Egypt and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.