Today, with prices for quality modern art reaching well into the seven and eight figures, the Indian Space Painters have yet to crack the six-figure threshold. Their watercolors and gouaches can be purchased for under $10,000, making them ideal for young collectors.

Today, David Findlay Jr. Fine Art in New York handles most of the estates of the Space Painters, although their works from the 1940s are becoming scarce. Gallery director Louis Newman says, “The issue for me is their significance individually and collectively to the story of American art, and it’s a story that is not told often enough. They were the conduit leading into Abstract Expressionism. They were very interested in flattening out the picture plane and in all-over painting. But they didn’t abandon the figure, as did the Abstract Expressionists, so they were overshadowed. I see my job as bringing attention to these artists who have made what I feel are important contributions to our culture.”

Art & Antiques Contributing Editor Joseph Jacobs is executive director of the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation in New York.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Life Colors Art: Fifty Years of Painting by Peter Busa with essays by Sandra Kraskin and Robert Metzger and an introduction by Bill Jensen (Provincetown: Provincetown Art Association & Museum, 1992).
Native American Art and the New York Avant-Garde: A History of Cultural Primitivism by W. Jackson Rushing (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1995).
The Indian Space Painters: Native American Sources for American Abstract Art, November 8 to December 17, 1991 by Sandra Kraskin et al. (The Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, New York, 1991).
Steve Wheeler: The Oracle Visiting the 20th Century by Gail Stavisky (Monclair, New Jersey: Montclair Art Museum, 1997).
David Findlay Jr. Fine Art, New York. 212.486.7660.
Gary Snyder Fine Art, New York. 212.871.1077.
Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, N.J. 973.746.5555.
Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, New York. 212.802.2690.