Holly Solomon

"... I asked Andy to do my portrait. We went to Broadway and 47th Street, where they had this photobooth. Andy met me there, and we had a bunch of quarters. He was very particular about which booth. We tried a whole bunch of them...We finally decided on a booth. Andy took a few pictures, he stood there with me for a little bit and then he left me on my own. So I did the pictures all by myself. It helped being private and he understood that, too... Actually, if you're in a photobooth for a long time it gets pretty boring...I got so bored that I started to really act in them. I was a student then of Lee Strasberg, so I started to do all these acting exercises."
- Holly Solomon, in C. Heinrich, Andy Warhol Photography, exh.cat., Hamburg Kunsthalle and the Andy Warhol Museum, Zurich and New York, 1999, p. 94.

Pop icon, Warhol muse, collector, and art dealer, Holly Solomon was a fixture in the downtown New York art scene of the 1970s. A friend and champion to many artists, her influence upon the scene is demonstrated by her portraits made by many of the most important artists of the period: Andy Warhol, Richard Pettibone, Roy Lichtenstein, Christo, and Robert Rauschenberg. Her lavish soirees, revolutionary exhibitions, and spirited advocacy of the avant-garde became a guiding source of support and inspiration for artists in her milieu. Her son Thomas Solomon continues her legacy, cultivating diverse conceptual and emerging artists as a leading dealer and art advisor. Following in Holly’s footsteps, he is an advocate for conceptual art and holds deep, intergenerational ties to many of the twentieth century’s most influential artists. Holly shared her deep passion for collecting and love for emerging artists with Thomas, who continues to carry her legacy forward.

Christie’s is proud to present Property from the Collection of Holly and Thomas Solomon, including many important examples from artists Holly befriended, represented, and exhibited, and whom Thomas continues to champion. Holly was an early champion of Gordon Matta-Clark, organizing his famous Splitting project. She was similarly first to recognize and show the work of the visionary Nam June Paik, advancing the dialectic past Minimalism and Pop to explore new opportunities in visual art. Her enthusiastic support of nontraditional installation and performance art marked her as an insightful and prescient collector, demonstrated by her deep holdings of works by Christo and Sol Lewitt. Christo and Jean-Claude were extremely close to Holly and became Thomas’s godparents. Holly similarly advocated for innovative women artists, including Liza Bear, Jackie Winsor, and especially Mary Heilmann, whose multiple solo shows at the Holly Solomon gallery from 1976-1981 established the artist as a leading figure. Heilmann’s Untitled comes from this period, providing an evocative glimpse of the relationship between these two powerful inspiring women in the New York art world.

Holly Solomon, described by the New York Times as a “small, vivacious woman with silver-blond hair” with “a forceful personality who regarded her artists as part of her family,” became an icon and source of artistic inspiration in her own right. The collection speaks to the influence of Holly as a muse, including portraits of the dealer by Andy Warhol and Christo. Her image became so important that Richard Pettibone appropriated her portrait after Warhol in his Portrait of Holly Solomon, also included in this collection.

Embodying their passion, enthusiasm, and influence upon the New York art world, this collection presents an important retrospective of the period, exploring the close relationships the Solomons held with the artists they represented and collected. With a storied provenance and compelling ties between the collectors and their artists, Property from the Collection of Holly and Thomas Solomon presents an exciting opportunity to behold an excellent survey of one of the most exciting artistic periods of the twentieth century.