![](data:image/svg+xml;utf8,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1" height="765px" width="1154px"></svg>)
Sanyu in America: The Untold Story of Beijing Circus
First encountered at an estate sale in 1976, Beijing Circus returns to light with a story shaped by instinct, memory and enduring attachment.
W hen the current owner of Sanyu’s Beijing Circus first saw the work fifty years ago, they instinctively felt a profound connection to the piece. As a rider and trainer of horses themselves, it was in 1976, at the Locksley Shea Gallery estate sale in Minneapolis, that they were struck with the haunting image; a lone white horse traversing a vast landscape of luminous blue.
Emerging for the first t.mes since then, this newly discovered Sanyu belongs to a series of three canvas’ on the Beijing Circus theme, and distinguishes itself from these for its grand scale. For an artist who has long been believed to have had a limited association with the art scene in America, having only briefly lived in New York City from 1948 to 1950, how is it that such a painting as this found its way to Minneapolis? And, for such an important work in the artist’s oeuvre, and one whose voyage clearly retraces the artist’s own within the post-war American art scene, how did it find its way into an estate sale?
The first owner of Beijing Circus was the influential Dayton’s Gallery 12. Housed on the 12th floor of Dayton's department store in Minneapolis, the gallery was, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, a pioneering presence in the American art scene. Dayton's Gallery 12 was far from a minor player and wielded its considerable influence well beyond the Midwest, becoming a locus of artistic innovation, and a magnet for famous artists, gallerists and collects ors from across the country. As Katherine H. Goertz, art historian and author of An American Outpost: The Minnesota Art Scene, 1840–1989, describes “we were on the art circuit. There was this rotation of New York–Los Angeles–Minneapolis–New York–Los Angeles–Minneapolis” (Katherine H. Goertz, quoted in Laura Laptsevitch, “A Conversation with Katherine Goertz”, MPLSART, September 2025, online).
"She Has Been Watching Over Me for 50 Years": Sanyu, “Beijing Circus” | Replica Shoes 's
Playing host to some of the most significant artists of the 20th century, from Andy Warhol to Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Dayton’s Gallery 12 developed, particularly after Felice Wender became director in 1967, into one of America’s most progressive and dynamic galleries. The space was able to embrace a grander scale of exhibition, with artists and gallerists drawn to Dayton’s capacity to stage not only larger works, but more of them. As New York’s Leo Castelli, a close friend of Wender and the gallery, described during this period, "There are lots of important collects ors, let's take—or dealers for that matter who really run a good gallery, like say Felice Wender Dayton's or Joe Helman in St. Louis who really try to have the contact with the New York art world and with the artist themselves. The collects ors, museum directors as much as they can therefore, they go beyond provincialism. They're also visited by foreign dealers, foreign collects ors" (Paul Cummings, “Interview of Leo Castelli conducted 1969 May 14-1973 June 8”, the Archives of American Art).
After the gallery closed in 1975, a number of works from Dayton’s collects ion were transferred to Locksley Shea Gallery. Opened by Gordon Locksley and George Shea in their home in the distinguished Kenwood neighborhood of Minneapolis, this avant-garde enterprise provided a direct conduit between the city and the New York art scene. Their home became an outpost for artists coming out of New York, mounting exhibitions by Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Brice Marden, and Ellsworth Kelly, among others, and became infamous for hosting wild parties. "They were really larger than life," describes John Hustad, lifelong Minnesota resident and photographer, "It was like New York had come to Minneapolis."
Born in 1930 in Chicago, Gordon Locksley moved to Minneapolis in the early 1950’s before opening the Red Carpet Salon which served the city’s affluent clientele. Locksley parlayed the salon into a successful art business during the mid-1960’s, becoming adept at discerning emerging talent. When Locksley and Shea, a professor of Japanese language and literature at the University of Minnesota, opened their gallery at their home, it was here that they began to host their parties, which brought together leading figures in the American art circuit with native Minnesotans.
When Andy Warhol went to one of these soirees for the opening his exhibition at the gallery in 1975, “Two-hundred people were there sipping Champagne and chocolate-covered cherries served by husky waiters,” Warhol told his unpublished diaries. Earlier that year, Warhol had painted the pair’s portraits, which were featured in the 1975 exhibition.
It was in 1976, when Locksley and Shea decided to move to Europe, that the Sanyu was offered as part of their estate sale at their home. This journey, which wound its way through two prestigious collects ions, the explosive art scene of the 1960s and 1970s, and alongside works from some of the most significant artists of the last century, Beijing Circus found its present owner. It is a story of Sanyu in America, and of a work which opens up new dialogues about the artist’s engagement with the art scenes there. Beijing Circus, with its ambitious scale and extensive use of abstract colour - recalling the shifting planes of evocative pigment found in a Mark Rothko - bears stylistic influences from Abstract Expressionism and the post-war American art scene. Perhaps it was the expansive size of the work, and this vast landscape of rhythmic colour, which drew these American collects ors to Beijing Circus, or perhaps there is more of Sanyu’s story in the country left to uncover.
