GUEST: Charles White became part
of my household once I came into
possession of this work through
my sister-in-law Maria. She
gave these to me about a year
ago. She thought maybe I should
just frame these and, and share
them with my family members.
And I said, "No, I think
we should see, you know,
get more information
about Charles White."
APPRAISER: Well, you brought
in two wonderful sets of prints
by Charles White. Charles White
is really a fantastic American
artist, an African-American
artist. And, and these are
very good examples of his work.
Charles White is a pre-eminent
modern American artist, and
he was born in 1918 in Chicago.
He studied at the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago
as a teenager.
GUEST: Uh-huh.
APPRAISER: And he rose
to prominence, was a
part of the WPA program.
He did mural paintings.
And then he became really known
as a graphic artist. His work
is in many museum collections.
And he was celebrated during
his lifetime, but just recently,
he's risen to much greater
prominence, well deserved.
Presently, there's a
retrospective of his
work that's traveling.
It was exhibited at the Museum
of Modern Art in New York and
in Chicago, at the Art Institute
of Chicago. And it's now in
Los Angeles. He was a political
artist, and he wanted to say
more about the African-American
experience, the struggles
that they were going through,
especially in the 1960s,
when these were done.
These are reproduction
prints. They're offset
lithographs of his drawings.
And they were printed in the
early 1960s with his gallery,
Heritage Gallery, and A.C.A.
Gallery in New York. And he
really wanted to make his work
more available. So these
portfolios were printed
to promote his, his
work. They reproduced
his drawings. And you have
two sets here. We have a set
of six and a set of ten. Each
image is a drawing he did from
the time, from, like, the late
1950s and early '60s. This
is what his work was all about.
So we actually don't know how
many of these are printed in
each edition. The numbers were
quite large. I imagine hundreds
were printed. The original
drawings would be very
large. They were, like, four
feet high, five feet wide.
GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: Artist reproductions
usually don't rise to the value
that they would be something
you would see at an auction
house or a gallery, but these
were critical to Charles White's
work. He wanted them
to be represented. He
wanted more people to
obtain them. And because
of his significance, because of
his importance now, these are
highly collectible. And they
are also pristine examples and
the complete sets. And that's
really the difference. They
haven't been framed. They're
almost as if you obtained
them the day they were issued
in the '60s. At auction
today, the set of six I would
estimate at $1,000 to $1,500,
and the set of ten would reach
$2,000 to $3,000 at auction.
GUEST: Awesome, awesome.
APPRAISER: Yeah.
GUEST: That's good to know.