Home-Based Galleries of Lost Art
Written by Dan Harding
Anyone who has perused the long aisles, bins, and boxes at estate sales, thrift stores, and even garage sales has probably noticed leaning stacks of vintage, unknown artwork. Many people might stop to wonder who this or that artist may have been, even flip through the stacks, but will typically move on to seek out that vintage desk or coffee table. Yet two entrepreneurial gallery owners in San Francisco are making a living out of harvesting vintage art by unknown but talented artists and reintroducing it to the art world at very reasonable prices.
Rob Delamater and Gaetan Caron of Lost Art Salon are re-framing the modern art gallery and, perhaps more importantly, reviving the careers and renown of artists formerly relegated to thrift-store anonymity. The idea took form when Delamater began seeking low-cost, vintage artwork to hang in refurbished rooms at Joie de Vivre hotels. Five years ago the two friends, and neighbors, decided to pursue the concept full time.
At first they found, framed (usually vintage frames from the same source as the art itself), and hung the pieces in their Victorian-style living rooms. They have now moved to a 1,500 square foot space on the edge of the Mission District, holding to the salon style that individualized their home-based galleries.
The two focus on artwork from the turn of the 20th Century through the 1960s, including waterscapes, landscapes, cityscapes, portraits, nudes, still lifes, abstract paintings, and even photography in their now 3,000-plus collection. Some of the work is framed, with the rest housed in easy-to-browse portfolios, and very rarely does any framed piece exceed $1,000 in price.
Lost Art Salon offers collectors and art enthusiasts a chance to discover quality, vintage art that is new to them at a low price. And they are finding work by quite a few museum-quality artists who somehow were lost in the shuffle over the last century.
As Caron put it, "It's a place where accomplished artists who failed to sell their work during their lifetimes will have their '15 minutes of frame.'"
Source article: San Francisco Chronicle.
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