Several works by Karl Priebe were on view in January 2020 at Mitchell Algus gallery in an enthusiastically received show titled “Acquired on eBay (and from other surrogate sources).” The exhibition was praised in reviews in the New York Times, The New Yorker and Art in America and critics singled out the works by Priebe as particularly worthy of note. Algus, a connoisseur of underappreciated artists, described how the show came about:
”It began with the discovery of a tiny surrealist painting by James Wilson Edwards (1915-2004) at an antiques mall in Millerton, NY. Unknown to me, Edwards turned out to be an African-American artist who studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and was a member of the Princeton Colony of Black artists in the 1960s and 1970s. Interested in finding more work by this artist I searched eBay but found none. Further googling led to work by Edwards in the Petrucci Family Foundation (PFF) Collection of African American Art. This, in turn, resulted in a broader eBay search for artists represented in the PFF and the purchase of an odd fantasy landscape by Beni E. Kosh (1917–1993), a little-known artist from Cleveland, OH. After this acquisition, I started to search eBay for artists I have had a long-term interest in but lacked a direct source. I thereby obtained work by Darrel Austin and Karl Preibe, two artists who showed at Perls Gallery in New York in the 1940s through the 1970s. Spectacularly successful in their time with profiles in Life magazine – Austin outsold Alexander Calder and the major School of Paris painters that the gallery represented – and Priebe, a gay, white Midwesterner who was a close friend of Gertrude Abercrombie and, supported by Carl Van Vechten, was involved in the later stages of the Harlem Renaissance. Yet Priebe and Austin became victims of changing tastes and their work receded from art world conscience.”
Art in America described the show as a “meditation on forms of exchange, as well as a riposte to an art market increasingly divided between haves and have-nots.” Roberta Smith, writing in the New York Times stated that the exhibition:
“comes on like a magnetic cornucopia of paintings and drawings by dozens of mostly midcentury artists, many now obscure, contextualized by sundry photographs and books. It mirrors the narrowness of established taste, the fickleness of the art market and the friendships forged among artists that help them survive. The effect is alternately informative, sobering and weirdly optimistic and ineffably touching. A parting wisdom: Collecting art is less about money than about passion, curiosity and persistence. If you truly love art for itself, not for status or investment, you will find things you can afford.”
