GUEST: My wife's aunt passed away in 2019, and she was a collector of all kinds of art, but particularly African American artists.

And my wife inherited, uh, a number of pieces from her, and that's how we got this.

APPRAISER: And do you know the name of the artist?

GUEST: Yeah, it's Ed Clark.

APPRAISER: What did you discover on the back of the piece?

GUEST: What we found was a handwritten inscription which said was pa-- done in April 1976, Yucatan, Mexico, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico at the Hotel American.

APPRAISER: Ed Clark was a very important African American artist.

He reached a level of prominence later in his career.

He was born in 1926 in New Orleans and passed away in 2019.

He began as a figurative painter while studying at the Art Institute in Chicago.

He later moved to Paris and his style changed dramatically.

He synthesized the European and American post-war abstraction to form his own style.

He returned to the U.S., emerged on the New York art scene and, really, produced for 70 years, where his work began being shown and collected.

Institutions such as MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Recently, the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture have acquired his work.

And also in the collection of the Studio Museum of Harlem.

Clark produced work on canvas and also on paper.

This is a work on paper, it's pigment on paper.

Something that is indicative of his work are the bands of color, that is signature to his style.

It's reflected in the works on canvas and paper.

In recent years, his work has become highly sought after.

So I would give a conservative estimate of between $50,000 and $65,000 in a gallery.

GUEST: Wow, thank you.

APPRAISER: You have a really beautiful piece here by Clark, and it's quite a gem.

GUEST: Yes, we like it very much.