Modern American Masterworks from the Ted Shen Collection

Christie’s is honored to present Modern American Masterworks from the Ted Shen Collection as a dedicated auction on 21 April 2023. Ted Shen is a musical theater composer and with his wife, Mary Jo, oversees The Ted & Mary Jo Shen Charitable Gift Fund, a philanthropic foundation supporting the work of exceptional musical theater composers and ballet choreographers. Following a 30 year investment banking career, in 1999 he retired to reconnect with his music roots developed as a jazz musician in high school and college as well as to activate his foundation and engage in nonprofit board service. He has established the Shen Curriculum of Musical Theater at his alma mater Yale University, and served on the boards of Phillips Exeter Academy, the Packer Collegiate Institute and the New York City Art Commission, the Brooklyn Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery. His lifelong passion for modern and contemporary art was stimulated while an undergraduate at Yale, which inspired him 30 years later to explore and collect early American Modernist art.

United by exceptional quality, the Ted Shen Collection is anchored by four works showing the breadth of Marsden Hartley’s career, led by his 1940-41 masterwork On the Beach and seminal abstract composition from 1916-17, Trixie. Stuart Davis is also represented in depth, most notably by his 1931 painting Wharf. John Marin’s Lobster Boat, Cape Split, Maine embodies the artist at the height of his capabilities, while two major works by Arthur Dove show the creative fervor of one of the most daring American Modernists. Other artists represented in the Ted Shen Collection include Oscar Bluemner, Charles Burchfield, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler and Joseph Stella.

The auction will be immediately followed by Modern American Art on 21 April 2023.