20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session New York, 15 May 2019, 11am
155. Andy Warhol
00. artist
107. Jean Dubufet
114. Joan Mirรณ
152. Jean-Michel Basquiat
149. Pablo Picasso
143. Agnes Martin
20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale Morning Session New York, 15 May 2019, 11am
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Auction & Viewing Location 450 Park Avenue New York 10022
Auction Wednesday, 15 May 2019, 11am
Viewing 3 – 15 May Monday – Saturday 10am–6pm Sunday 12pm–6pm
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169. Richard Serra
198. Atsuko Tanaka
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Jean Dubufet Works on Paper From the Private Collection of William Harris Smith, Chicago
The collection of works on paper by Jean Dubufet accumulated by William Harris Smith spans the two seminal decades of the artist’s career. With one work dating from 1943, at the very beginning of Dubufet’s artistic maturity when he began to develop his signature style, the works form parts of some of his most important series. It is only too apt that one of the later pictures is from what many consider the apogee of Dubufet’s artistic explorations: the image of two cars relating to the Paris Circus series of the early 1960s. This urban, even cosmopolitan theme is perfectly suited to the legacy that Smith lef in his beloved native Chicago, a city with strong links to Dubufet. The artist had visited Chicago as early as 1951, giving his important lecture “Anticultural Positions” at the Arts Club. In some ways, Dubufet and Smith each took unorthodox approaches to their respective felds. Smith, afer all, was remembered as an “eclectic developer” in an obituary in Crain’s Chicago Business. When Dubufet began honing his style in the early 1940s, he was doing so against the backdrop of the German Occupation of Paris. To create an art so willfully linked to what Dubufet would term Art Brut—the art of those seeing the world in diferent ways, from the mentally ill to children to outsiders—was a bold decision, only a few years afer the phrase Entartete Kunst had been made so widespread. It was the freshness of Dubufet’s provocative vision that saw a number of prominent fgures of the French cultural frmament, in particular
writers, gather around him, visiting his studio for glimpses of his trailblazing pictures, which were gleeful afronts to the prevailing notions of taste of the day. William Smith’s collection includes two examples of Dubufet’s 1946 Portraits, one of the series that would see the artist gain increasing international recognition. As well as the author Marcel Jouhandeau, there is also a depiction of Michel Tapié in profle—an art critic who would come to write about Dubufet, and who would join him in promoting Art Brut. These portraits are but two of the cluster of works from the 1940s, when Dubufet came to prominence. Other milestones include Dubufet’s 1947-1948 trip to Algeria, memorialized in Deux Arabes et desert rose El Golia, where life in the Sahara struck him with such force. Meanwhile, later series such as the iconic Corps de dame of 1950 and the Barbes of the end of that decade are also represented, as well as several relating to the zany and intoxicating Paris Circus of the early 1960s. Fittingly, the collection features works created using a variety of techniques, from drawings in charcoal or pen to paintings in gouache to the complex assemblages and collages of Tête griotte and Barbe des bourreaux de Paris. Looking at this formidable grouping of pictures, it is easy to conclude that it was the combination of Dubufet’s unconventional approach to picture making and his unique, playful and unvarnished view of the world that attracted Smith to his work.
101. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Corps de dame signed and dated “J. Dubufet 50� lower right ink on paper laid on board 10 3/4 x 8 3/8 in. (27.2 x 21.2 cm.) Executed in 1950. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Collection of Alfonso Ossorio, New York Daniel Varenne Galerie le Clos de Sierne, Geneva Peridot Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jean Dubufet, February 21 April 8, 1962, no. 69 New York, Wildenstein Gallery & Pace Gallery, Jean Dubufet: A Retrospective, April 22 May 29, 1987 Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule VI: Corps de dames, Paris, 1987, no. 155, p. 118 (illustrated, p. 98)
102. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Personnage (no. 25) signed with the artist’s initials and dated “J.D. juin 60” lower right; further titled and numbered “25 ‘Personnage’” on the reverse ink on paper 12 3/4 x 9 7/8 in. (32.5 x 25.2 cm.) Executed in June 1960. Estimate $25,000-35,000 Provenance Galerie Berggruen, Paris Collection of Eric Estorick Esq., London B.C. Holland, Inc., Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule XVIII: Dessins, Lausanne, 1969, no. 78, p. 134 (illustrated, p. 47)
103. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Personnage (no. 27) signed with the artist’s initials and dated “J.D. juin 60” lower right; further titled and numbered “27 ‘Personnage’” on the reverse ink on paper 12 3/4 x 9 7/8 in. (32.5 x 25 cm.) Executed in June 1960. Estimate $25,000-35,000 Provenance Galerie Berggruen, Paris Collection of Eric Estorick Esq., London B.C. Holland, Inc., Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule XVIII: Dessins, Lausanne, 1969, no. 80, p. 134 (illustrated, p. 47)
104. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Personnage (P. 14) signed with the artist’s initials and dated “J.D. janv. 60” lower right; further numbered “P. 14” on the reverse ink on paper 9 7/8 x 6 3/8 in. (25 x 16.3 cm.) Executed in January 1960. Estimate $20,000-30,000 Provenance James Goodman Gallery, New York Milton D. Ratner Family Collection, Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule XVIII: Dessins 1960, Lausanne, 1969, no. 15, p. 133 (illustrated, p. 20)
105. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Personnage (mi corps) signed with the artist’s initials and dated “J.D. 62” lower right; further numbered and dated “DG 80 14 mars 62 14 mars 62” on the reverse gouache on paper 12 3/4 x 7 7/8 in. (32.3 x 20.3 cm.) Executed on March 14, 1962. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Daniel Cordier Gallery, Paris Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Mayer, New York Christie’s, New York, November 15, 1989, lot 96 B.C. Holland, Inc., Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule XIX: Paris Circus, Paris, 1989, no. 321, p. 227 (illustrated, p. 155)
106. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Jouhandeau innocent inscribed “MARCEL JOUHANDEAU” center right and signed and dated “J. Dubufet 46” lower right; further numbered “3623” on the reverse charcoal on paper mounted on paper 19 7/8 x 11 5/8 in. (50.7 x 29.4 cm.) Executed in October 1946. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance Collection of Jean Paulhan, Paris Galerie Krugier, Geneva Galerie de France, Paris B.C. Holland, Inc., Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule III: Plus beaux qu’ils croient, Paris, 2003, no. 55, p. 125 (illustrated, p. 45) Werner Jehle, “Spontane ‘Kunstschrif’”, NationalZeitung Basel, July 15, 1970, n.p. (illustrated)
Jean Dubufet’s Jouhandeau innocent was executed in 1946, and is therefore one of the historic group of portraits that the artist created that year. The subject is the celebrated author Marcel Jouhandeau, who featured in a number of other pictures by Dubufet from the period. As beftted Dubufet, these were not the eulogizing portraits with which people tended to be familiar. Instead, he avoided simple likenesses, aiming to capture something that was more of a jolt to the system. This is apparent in Jouhandeau innocent, in which the densely-worked charcoal of the fgure contrasts with the paleness of the sheet of paper on which it has been created. The author is shown as a jutting, dark stalagmite, towering up composition. Dubufet, rather than fattering his subject, has instead opted to isolate and emphasize a few key features: his tall, thin frame, his glasses, his plug ears and the harelip recorded in so many photographs of him in the
era. When a group of Dubufet’s portraits were exhibited in 1947, in one of his earliest exhibitions, he wrote in the catalogue words which apply tellingly here: “People are more handsome than they think they are” (Jean Dubufet, 1947, quoted in Peter Selz, The Work of Jean Dubufet, New York, 1962, p. 31). Dubufet had been fascinated by art for a long time before he began to develop his signature style. It was in the early 1940s, during the occupation of Paris, that he began to strip away the gloss of acquired taste and Western canonical thinking, instead seeking a form of art that was more immediate. As he said at the time of exhibiting his Portraits, which included two oils and two drawings of Jouhandeau, “What interests me is not cake but bread…” (Jean Dubufet, quoted in Peter Selz, The Work of Jean Dubufet, New York, 1962, p. 31). During the frst half of the 1940s, Dubufet had slowly acquired a small but devoted following, including a number of writers, beginning with his friend Georges Limbour. It was Limbour who brought Jean Paulhan—the frst owner of Jouhandeau innocent to Dubufet’s studio, and the pair hit it of immediately. It was also Paulhan who introduced Dubufet to the weekly salon lunches held by the American socialite Florence Gould, who asked Dubufet to record the likenesses of her guests. As well as Jouhandeau, other subjects would include Antonin Artaud, Edith Boissonas, Pierre Matisse, Henri Michaux, Michel Tapié, and Paulhan and Limbour themselves, to name but a fraction. Jouhandeau was a prominent author—and a complex character. He had been raised largely by female members of his family, under whose guidance he had become a devoted follower of the Roman Catholic church. This would result in a long inner confict with his homosexuality – the tension fueling much of his writing, as well as his marriage. It was perhaps as a refection of the complexity of Jouhandeau’s character that in Dubufet’s likeness here, he is described as “innocent”.
107. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Barbe des bourreaux de Paris signed and dated “J. Dubufet 59” lower center; further titled, inscribed and dated “D40 Barbe des bourreaux de Paris mai 59” on the reverse ink and paper collage on paper 20 1/8 x 13 1/8 in. (51 x 33.3 cm.) Executed in May 1959. Estimate $300,000-500,000 Provenance Galerie Daniel Cordier, Paris B.C. Holland, Inc., Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Paris, Galerie Daniel Cordier, As-tu cueilli la feur de barbe, April 27 - May 31, 1960, no. 3 Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule XV: as-tu cueilli la feur de barbe, Paris, 1985, no. 9, p. 86 (illustrated, p. 17)
Barbe des bourreaux de Paris was executed in May 1959 and therefore ranks as one of the earliest works in Jean Dubufet’s series of “Barbes.” This is a highly-acclaimed group of works that saw Dubufet embracing fguration, and in particular the human fgure itself as a subject, with a renewed enthusiasm, following several years focusing on abstract or near-abstract depictions of textures and soils. In Barbe des bourreaux de Paris, the Texturologies have not been surpassed: they have been subsumed, with the titular beard, as well as the man’s body, being created out of collage fragments of those earlier works. In returning with such gusto to human subjects, Dubufet can be seen to have been unknowingly paving the way for one of his most celebrated series of all, the Paris Circus of 1961. The origin of the “Barbes” was an illustration that Dubufet included in a letter penned to his friend, the author Georges Limbour. Previously, Limbour—one of Dubufet’s longest-standing supporters—had likened the artist to a stoic because of the perceived asceticism of the Texturologies. In response, Dubufet portrayed himself as
the bearded Roman emperor and philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. In May 1959—the month that Dubufet created Barbe des bourreaux de Paris—he wrote to André Pieyre de Mandiargues describing his newfound enthusiasm for the subject: “I am trying my hand at painting beards… I would like to paint a series of vast, cosmic, mystic beards” (Jean Dubufet, quoted in Dubufet, exh. cat., Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2001, p. 384). Barbe des bourreaux de Paris is the result of this quest: in the picture, Dubufet has deliberately lef the other facial features of the man almost unarticulated—they are cursory. This allows a complex game of textures to be played out in the composition, with the body itself featuring more densely-worked collage elements, while the beard itself is flled with marks and movements. It is a shimmering constellation and, placed at the center of the picture, demands the viewer’s attention. Within a short time of Barbe des bourreaux de Paris being created, Dubufet had made an entire series of “Beards”. Indeed, only the following year, he would publish a poem, La feur de Barbe, illustrated with some of these works. Later in 1960, the Paris-based gallerist Daniel Cordier—the frst owner of this work—held an exhibition entitled, Jean Dubufet. As-tu cueilli la Fleur de Barbe. For Dubufet, the beard served as a symbol of masculinity, in contrast to the Corps de dame series from the beginning of the 1950s. The fgures such as Barbe des bourreaux de Paris are hieratic, mystical, monolithic. This is an inscrutable, near-featureless man, staring out from the picture plane. His beard appears to be a cosmos in its own right, a realm of mystery and infnite complexity. Writing only a couple of years afer Barbe des bourreaux de Paris was made, the museum director Peter Selz described this series: “Some resemble great rock formations or age-old boulders predating man’s presence on this planet. Or they appear to be survivors of ancient barbaric—that is to say, bearded—civilizations. Their shapes recall the menhirs of Stonehenge and the Winged Bulls from Assyrian palaces. The beard is the ageless symbol of manhood…It is the memory of these archetypes that Dubufet now evokes” (Peter Selz, The Work of Jean Dubufet, New York, 1962, p. 149).
108. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Michel Tapié signed, titled and dated “Michel TAPIÉ J. Dubufet 46” lower right crayon on paper 16 3/8 x 10 3/8 in. (41.5 x 26.5 cm.) Executed in 1946. Estimate $30,000-50,000 Provenance Collection of Michel Tapié, Paris Donald Morris Gallery, Inc., Detroit Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Sanfeld, Farmington (by 1974) B.C. Holland, Inc., Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Detroit, Donald Morris Gallery, Dubufet paintings drawings gouaches 1946 – 1966, March 1974, no. 3, n.p. (illustrated) Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule III: Plus beaux qu’ils croient, Paris, 2008, no. 9, p. 125 (illustrated, p. 19)
109. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Deux arabes signed and dated “J. Dubufet 48” lower right; further inscribed and dated “Deux arabes et désert rose El Goléa 1948 4” on the reverse gouache on paper 15 3/4 x 19 7/8 in. (39.9 x 50.5 cm.) Executed in January - April 1948. Estimate $70,000-100,000
Provenance Collection of James Lord, Connecticut Ruth O’Hara Fine Art, New York ACA Galleries, New York B.C. Holland Inc., Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule IV: Roses d’Allah, clowns du désert, Lausanne, 1997, no. 565, p. 272 (illustrated, p. 252)
110. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Tête griotte signed and dated “J. Dubufet 57” lower lef; further signed, titled, and dated “Tête griotte J. Dubufet février 57” on the reverse ink and printed paper collage on paper 25 5/8 x 16 3/8 in. (65 x 41.6 cm.) Executed in February 1957. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Collection of Mrs. Trudi Brückner, Basel Private Collection, Geneva (by 1969) B.C. Holland, Inc., Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule XII: Tableaux d’assemblages, Lausanne, 1969, no. 131, p. 131 (illustrated, p. 104)
111. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Buste (avec grafti au couteau) signed with the artist’s initials and dated “J. D. 62” upper lef; further numbered and dated “DC 86 16 mars 62” on the reverse gouache on paper 12 3/4 x 8 1/2 in. (32.5 x 21.5 cm.) Executed on March 16, 1962. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Daniel Cordier Gallery, Paris Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Arne Ekstrom, New York Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Mayer, New York Christie’s, New York, November 15, 1989, lot 97 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule XIX: Paris Circus, Paris, 1989, no. 327, p. 227 (illustrated, p. 157 )
112. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Deux Automobiles (Peugeot, Fiat) signed with the artist’s initials and dated “J.D. 21/6/61” lower right; further inscribed and dated “D-18 21 juin 61” on the reverse ink on paper 15 1/2 x 12 7/8 in. (39.5 x 32.7 cm.) Executed on June 21, 1961. Estimate $30,000-50,000 Provenance Galerie Daniel Cordier, Paris Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, New York Donald Morris Gallery, Detroit Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Sanfeld, Farmington Hills, Michigan B.C. Holland, Inc., Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited London, Robert Fraser Gallery, Dubufet: recent gouaches and drawings, April 10 - December 5, 1962, no. 14 New York, Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, Dubufet: Paris Circus, November 20 - December 19, 1962, no. 5, n.p. (illustrated) Detroit, Donald Morris Gallery, Jean Dubufet: Exhibition of oils, gouaches, drawings, January 19 February 9, 1964, no. 25 Detroit, Donald Morris Gallery, dubufet paintings drawings gouaches 1946 – 1966, March 1974, no. 22, n.p. (illustrated) Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule XIX: Paris Circus, Paris, 1989, no. 80, p. 224 (illustrated, p. 51)
Andy Warhol, Miles Fiterman, 1975. Artwork © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Andy Warhol, Shirley Fiterman, 1976. Artwork © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, Jean Dubufet, Willem de Kooning – the list of esteemed names that constitute the Collection of Miles and Shirley Fiterman reads like a cross-continental survey of the 20th century’s most infuential artists. Born out of the seminal decade of the 1960s, the collection is not only a tribute to the dawning of a revolutionary era, but a witness to its making. To look at how Miles and Shirley Fiterman collected is to understand the importance of the collector at this crucial point in post-war history. Whilst few individuals have gathered artworks of such quality and importance, fewer still have done so across four decades, as new masterpieces were created by the same artists that they met and supported. A unique afnity with the zeitgeist and an ability to act ahead of the curve is what binds this collection to the industrial achievements of its proprietors. Intuitive, innovative and entrepreneurial, Miles Q. Fiterman was highly infuential in the construction boom following World War II, catering to the unprecedented demand for housing Miles Homes Inc., which he founded in 1946, grew to be the nation’s largest supplier of prefabricated housing prior to its sale in 1972. The Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection astutely harnesses the common aesthetic impulses of the 20th century and allows us to investigate their variations. Bold yet elegant, expressing both formal balance and expressive abandon, the collection celebrates the ability of art to imagine the world anew.
Based in Minneapolis, Miles and Shirley Fiterman formed part of a conduit between the international contemporary art scene and their beloved home city. Their sustained eforts to bring great art to the region manifested in their lifelong support of the Walker Art Center and The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Highly personal, astutely connoisseurial and indelibly philanthropic, the Fitermans’ model of collecting was built on several important foundations: the personal relationships that they built with trailblazing dealers and gallerists such as Gordon Locksley and Aimé Maeght; the acquisition of exemplary works by the revolutionary artists that they met and forged frienships with – including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg; sustained patronage to museums that championed the causes of modern and contemporary art; and their proactive role in providing greater access to education in art. The couple were patrons of and enabled acquisitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where the Fiterman name graces several of the museum’s buildings. Miles and Shirley Fiterman were also active patrons within the locale of their other residence in Palm Beach, Florida. Both sat on the board of the Norton Gallery & School of Art, where Mrs. Fiterman went on to assume the role of board president. Outside of the United States, Miles and Shirley Fiterman were honored as Patrons of the Year in 2001 at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Tel Aviv Museum, where they also served as board members. As arbiters of taste, champions of groundbreaking artists, Miles and Shirley Fiterman did not simply collect – in essence, they defned what it was to be a collector in the 20th century.
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113. Joseph Cornell
1903-1972
Untitled signed “Joseph Cornell” on a label afxed to the reverse printed paper collage, acrylic, clay pipe, cork ball, and metal in a wood box construction 9 3/4 x 15 1/8 x 3 5/8 in. (24.8 x 38.3 x 9.2 cm.) Executed circa 1960. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Robert Elkon Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1976
Drawing the viewer into the fantastical realm of Joseph Cornell’s universe, Untitled is an exquisite example of the trailblazing artist’s shadow boxes. Created circa 1960, the present work belongs to Cornell’s fnal series of boxes, known alternately as Space Objects and Celestial Navigations that he began in the late 1950s. Recalling the artist’s very frst Soap Bubble Set shadow boxes, Cornell encapsulates the grand cosmos within the intimate confnes of his boxed constructions. Despite being created in an era of technological advancements ushering in the Space Age, Cornell’s boxed universes are infused with a sense of nostalgia and dream-like enigma. Ofen described as an armchair traveler of sorts, Cornell efectively embraced the process of creation as an act of imaginary travel. Cornell, a stargazer since childhood, was remarkably well-read on the history of astronomy, constellation mythologies as well as scientifc developments in science. Though venturing into the infnite realm of space with his mind, he rarely lef his immediate surroundings of New York. Working from the basement of his mother’s home in Flushing, Queens, Cornell transformed the raw material he collected from the outer world into surrealist assemblages of his inner world. Cornell ingeniously explores the connection between scientifc and childhood imagination in works such as the present one. As with many of Cornell’s shadow boxes, and in particular the Soap Bubble Set series,Untitled features a painted cork ball that rolls freely on a pair of horizontal rods in a manner that echoes Galileo Galilei’s 17th century experiments of motion, as well as the 18th century orrery
model of the solar system. Cornell’s signature Dutch clay pipe features prominently in the foreground, here fractured on the ground and partially embedded in a bed of sand. Echoing Man Ray’s Ce qui manque à nous tous, 1936, the pipe is one of the most reoccurring objects in Cornell’s oeuvre and speaks of the artist’s favorite childhood pastime of blowing soap bubbles. Seen in this light, the moon and the moving ball take on the form of large soap bubbles foating through Cornell’s imaginary universe. As such, Untitled vividly reminds us, as Angela Kramer Murphy put forward, that “our understanding of the cosmos is predicated not only on how far we can see, but on how much we can imagine” (Angela Kramer Murphy, “Imaginary Voyages”, in Joseph Cornell, Cosmic Travels, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1999, n.p.).
Joseph Cornell, Soap Bubble Set, 1949-1950. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, Artwork © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
“Shadowboxes become poetic theaters or settings wherein [their contents] are metamorphosed [into] the elements of a childhood pastime.� Joseph Cornell
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114. Joan Miró
1893-1983
Torse de femme incised with the artist’s signature and number “Miró E.A. 1” and stamped with the Fundició Parellada foundry mark on the reverse bronze with grey and brown patina 25 5/8 x 11 3/8 x 5 3/4 in. (65 x 29 x 14.5 cm.) Conceived in 1967 and cast by Fundició Parellada, Barcelona, this work is artist’s proof number 1 from an edition of 5 plus 3 artist’s proofs and 1 nominative cast. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Galerie Maeght, Paris Acquired from the above by the present owner Please visit phillips.com for extended cataloguing.
Joan Miró posing with his sculptures at the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1973. Photo © AGIP/ Bridgeman Images, Artwork © 2019 Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
A playful subversion of the traditional female bust in sculpture, Joan Miró’s Torse de femme encapsulates how the artist continued to challenge artistic conventions as he shifed his focus from painting to sculpture starting in the late 1950s. “The sculptures from the last two decades of Miró’s productive life took on a broad place and force,” Jacques Dupin has noted. “For Miró, sculpture became an intrinsic adventure, an important means of expression that competed with the canvas and sheet of paper…without ever simply being a mere derivative or deviation from painting…He dreamt of the street, public squares, gardens and cities. Just as he had always sought to transgress painting, he now sought to transgress his own work” (Jacques Dupin, Miró, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 361- 367). Conceived in 1967, this work is one of three artist’s proofs from an edition of nine casts, of which other examples reside in such prominent collections as the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid and the Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona. Torse de femme presents a powerful continuation of the body of work Miró referred to as Femme. Begun in 1949 with his earliest bronzes, he continued to develop the series further throughout the decades with a remarkably experimental approach. While he created some sculptures by frst modeling them in clay, this work was assembled from found objects and then cast in bronze. Torse de femme is a powerful example of how Miró distilled the human form with an aesthetic reminiscent of the Art Brut of Jean Dubufet, subverting the conventions of traditional sculpture by using what he referred to as “raw materials”. As he explained of his process of using the found materials he collected on strolls through the countryside, “I feel attracted to an object by a magnetic force, without the slightest premediation, and then I feel myself being drawn to another object which is added to the frst, and in combination they create a poetic shock, preceded by that visual and physical revelation which makes poetry truly moving…” (Joan Miro, Joan Miro: Selected Writings and Interviews, Boston, 1986, p. 125).
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115. Joan Miró
1893-1983
Maquette de l’arc de la Fondation Maeght incised with the artist’s signature and numbered “Miró 2/8” lower lef; further stamped by the foundry “Susse Fondeur Paris” on the reverse bronze with grey-brown patina 16 1/2 x 19 5/8 x 7 1/2 in. (42 x 50 x 19.1 cm.) Conceived in 1962 and cast by Susse Fondeur, Paris, this work is number 2 from an edition of 8 plus 5 artist’s proofs and 1 nominative cast. Estimate $180,000-220,000 Provenance Galerie Maeght-Lelong, Paris Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Kunsthaus Zürich, Joan Miró, Das plastische Werk, June 4 – July 30, 1972, no. 101, p. 54 (another example exhibited) New York, The Pace Gallery, Miró Sculpture, April 27 – June 9, 1984, p. 22 (another example exhibited and illustrated) The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Miró in Montreal, June 20 – October 5, 1986, no. 3, pp. 64, 239 (another example exhibited and illustrated) Kolding, Museet på Koldinghus, Miró Skulpturer, February 6 – April 12, 1993, no. 1, p. 30 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 27) Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Miró, June 6 – November 11, 1997, no. 73, p. 214 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 149) Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Fondation Maeght, Joan Miró Métamorphoses des formes, Collection de la Fondation Maeght, April 1 – June 25, 2001, no. 11, p. 221 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 58) Andros, Museum of Contemporary Art, Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, Joan Miró: In the Orbit of the Imaginary, June 23 –September 22, 2002, no. 58, n.p. (another example exhibited and illustrated)
Joan Miró’s Maquette de l’arc de la Fondation Maeght is an exquisite example of the artist’s unique sculptural vision that came to defne much of the second half of his life. Conceived in 1962, the present work was created as a maquette for the monumental sculpture L’Arc, 1963, an imaginative, creature-like sculpture fusing Greek and Catalan mythologies within the traditional format of the “arc de triomphe”. Miró conceived of this work specifcally for Labyrinth, his extraordinary maze-like sculpture garden at the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Miles and Shirley Fiterman acquired the Maquette de l’arc de la Fondation Maeght through art dealers Daniel Lelong and Aimé Maeght, both of whom became close friends and guided them in developing their collection to encompass the work of such European masters as Joan Miró. The present work not only speaks of the close relationship between the Fitermans and Aimé Maeght, it also encapsulates the deep friendship between Miró and Maeght. It was in 1964 that Aimé, together with his wife Marguerite, opened the Fondation Maeght as the frst institution dedicated to contemporary art in France. Miró took on a central role in the foundation’s creation, notably recommending his friend and architect Josep Lluís Sert to develop the museum’s design. This resulted in an unprecedented opportunity for Miró to realize his ambition of placing sculpture in dialogue with its surrounding architecture and nature – resulting in his magnum opus Labyrinth, within which L’Arc takes a key position. It is a testament to Miró’s great esteem for the Maeghts that he donated a remarkable collection of his work to the Fondation, including another example of Maquette de l’arc de la Fondation Maeght.
Literature Emilio Fernández Miró and Pilar Ortega Chapel, eds., Joan Miró, Sculptures. Catalogue raisonné 1928 1982, Paris, 2006, no. 59, p. 72 (another example illustrated, p. 73) Joan Miró, L’Arc, 1963. Fondation Maeght Saint-Paul de Vence, Photo Claude Germain-Successió Miró Archive, Artwork © 2019 Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP, Paris
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116. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Arbre aux deux étages signed with the artist’s initials and dated “J.D. 70” along the lower edge epoxy paint on polyurethane 34 5/8 x 19 5/8 x 22 in. (88 x 50 x 56 cm.) Executed on August 17, 1970. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Galerie Beyeler, Basel Irving Galleries, West Palm Beach Acquired from the above by the present owner in March 1982 Exhibited Genoa, Palazzo dell’Academia, Palazzo Reale, Imagine per la citta, August 4, 1972 - June 11, 1972, no. 126 Milan, Galleria Levi, Jean Dubufet: olii, gouaches, assemblages, sculture, monumenti, praticables, disegni, October - November 1972, no. 31 Madrid, Fundación Juan March, Jean Dubufet, February 9 - March 31, 1976, no. 70, p. 62 Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule XXV: Arbres, murs, architectures, Lausanne, 1974, no. 104, p. 130 (illustrated, p. 106)
View of Jean Dubufet’s Groupe de quatre arbres on Chase Manhattan Plaza. Photo Andreas Feininger, The Museum of the City of New York/ Art Resource, NY
Giving three-dimensional form to Jean Dubufet’s graphic universe, Arbre aux deux étages, 1970, belongs to the iconic series of sculptures that evolved from the artist’s acclaimed L’Hourloupe cycle. True to the series’ instantly recognizable forms covered with bold black line, the work interprets the structure of a two-tiered tree through a jigsaw-like confguration defned by thick black outlines. As one of only around a dozen Arbre sculptures, the present work is intimately connected to Dubufet’s frst monumental public sculpture Groupe de quatre arbres, commissioned by David Rockefeller in 1969 and inaugurated in 1972 at the Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York where it stands to this day. Executed in 1970, Arbre aux deux étages captures a critical moment in Dubufet’s development of his Hourloupe cycle from painting into a vast multi-media universe. It was in 1962, inspired by a series of pen doodles he had created whilst talking on the telephone, that Dubufet embarked upon what Thomas M. Messer described as, “arguably the most radical structural reinterpretation since Cubism” (Thomas M. Messer, “Jean Dubufet (19011985): A Summary”, in Jean Dubufet and Art Brut, exh. cat., Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1986, p. 24). Dubufet, who for the past 20 years had dedicated himself to seeking out raw, unmediated modes of expression, saw in these semi-automatic drawings the potential to access the inner workings of the mind. While initially creating drawings and paintings, Dubufet notably pushed his practice into the third dimension with this series. Yet rather than defning works such as the present one as sculptures in the traditional sense, Dubufet
“It is not in fact painted sculpture itself, but rather a monumentally erected painting.” Jean Dubufet
thought of them as “unleashed graphisms”, or “drawings which extend and expand in space” (Jean Dubufet, “Remarks on the unveiling of the Group of Four Trees”, in Jean Dubufet, Asphyxiating culture and other writings, New York, 1988, p. 117). Representing the purest articulation of line in space, Arbre aux deux étages appears as if lifed of the page or canvas of Dubufet’s self-contained graphic universe. To achieve this sense of weightlessness and graphic clarity, Dubufet would frst create a maquette from a block of polystyrene – using a hot wire to construct his form with an immediacy and preciseness that paralleled his act of drawing on paper. He then realized the form in polyurethane, a material he was entranced with for its lightness and ethereal white sheen. As Dubufet explained, “The spiritual exercise of integration and intimate unifcation of the physical with the mental world is aided by several factors, among which must be mentioned the astonishing lightness of the material used, by which the mind is moved to abolish the notion of weight from the objects of the physical world” (Jean Dubufet, “Note on the Painted Polystyrene Hourloupe Pieces”, in Jean Dubufet: Writings on Sculpture, Dusseldorf, 2011, p. 54).
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117. Josef Albers
1888-1976
Study to Homage to the Square - Looking Out signed with the artist’s monogram and dated “A 54” lower right; further signed, titled and dated “Study to Homage to the Square ‘Looking Out’, Albers 1954” on the reverse oil on Masonite 18 x 18 in. (45.7 x 45.7 cm.) Painted in 1954, this painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the work of Josef Albers currently being prepared by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and is registered under no. JAAF 1954.1.6. Estimate $200,000-300,000 Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Chicago, Fairweather-Hardin Gallery, Josef Albers, October - November 1959
Painted in 1954, Study to Homage to the Square – Looking Out is a sublime early example of Josef Albers’ technical mastery of color, form and material in his signature series Homage to the Square. Begun in 1950 and lasting over a quarter of a century, the Homage to the Square series constitutes the climax of his lifelong investigations into color theory. Albers painted these works daily, as a kind of spiritual exercise to cleanse his painting of everything accidental and impure, tirelessly pursuing total visual comprehension of opticality. Each Homage to the Square is subtly diferentiated by its hierarchy of colors and particular application of paint, and Looking Out is centered around a small blue square, nested inside a warm gray and fnally a rich grass green border. For Albers, the purpose of the integration of colors was to evoke diferent moods and visual efects through the contrasting combination of interlapping squares, each of which, he felt, was as diferent as an individual portrait.
“For me, a triangle has a face. A square, a circle – any elemental form – has features and therefore a ‘look’. They act and provoke our reactions, just as complex forms, such as human or other faces and fgures do”, Albers stated (Josef Albers, quoted in Elaine de Kooning, “Albers Paints a Picture”, ArtNews, vol. 49, no. 7, pt. 1, November 1950, p. 41). The title of each work is critical in summoning the “personality” associated with that work, since Albers titled his works according to the distinct process of making and the emotions he associated with them. The present work signals its meaning through color, texture and title: Looking Out suggests a window, a process of meditative observation of the world, which is reifed by the appearance of the sky-colored square at the heart of the painting. The texture emerges through the even, almost opaque application of paint, evincing the materiality of the object as well as the depth of the pigment. Each element of the work is defned by Albers’ precise theoretical gaze, and as he wrote, “Each painting is an instrumentation in its own… Choices of the colors used, as well as their order, is aimed at an interaction – infuencing and changing each other forth and back” (Josef Albers, quoted in Josef Albers: Homage to the Square, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1964, n.p.).
Josef Albers, Homage to the Square: Sof Spoken, 1969. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2019 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Property from the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection
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118. Tom Wesselmann
1931-2004
Cut-Out Nude Study signed and dated “Wesselman 65” lower lef acrylic and paper collage on paper 17 1/8 x 21 in. (43.4 x 53.4 cm.) Executed in 1965. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Locksley Shea Gallery, Minneapolis Acquired from the above by the present owner
With its clean, sunny palette and sensual depiction of the female nude, Cut-Out Nude Study, 1965, is a captivating example of iconic Pop artist Tom Wesselmann’s most celebrated subject matter. This female nude is composed of the placement of layers of saturated painted paper on a deep cobalt blue ground, while her face remains featureless but for a ruby Mae West smile. Originally conceived as a study for his cut-out nude screenprints on vinyl, CutOut Nude Study can also be seen as a precursor to Wesselmann’s innovative cut-out steel works of nude women, begun in 1984. The erasure of facial features is characteristic of Wesselmann’s witty, transgressive works, in which the nude body functions as a cipher for his formalist preoccupations with simplicity of form, fatness and hard-edged felds of color. In this regard, Cut-Out Nude Study is in direct lineage with Henri Matisse’s Blue Nude III, 1952, and indeed Matisse fgured a great source of inspiration for Wesselmann in his focus on the female nude and turn to decorative paper cutouts. Mirroring Matisse’s approach to structure, Wesselmann uses the cut-out to unite the crispness of the drawn line with the power of pure color. Ultimately, Cut-Out Nude Study recalls Matisse’s famous vision of his practice: “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity … an art which could be for every mental worker… a soothing, calming infuence on the mind” (Henri Matisse, Notes of a Painter, Paris, 1908, p. 52). Blending formalist hyperrealism with a Pop Art attitude, Cut-Out Nude Study is a paradigmatic example of Wesselmann’s exceptional oeuvre.
Henri Matisse, Blue Nude III, 1952. Musee National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, Photo credit © CNAC/MNAM/Dist. RMNGrand Palais/Art Resource, NY, Artwork © Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
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119. Sam Francis
1923-1994
Untitled acrylic on canvas 84 x 120 in. (213.4 x 304.8 cm) Painted in 1988-1989. Estimate $350,000-450,000 Provenance André Emmerich Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1989 Exhibited New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Sam Francis: New Paintings, February 2 - 25, 1989 Literature Debra Burchett-Lere, ed., Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings 1946-1994, Berkeley, 2011, no. SFF.1563, DVD I (illustrated)
The present work and Untitled, 1988-1989, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, in Sam Francis’s Venice Studio, 1989. Photo by Brian Forrest, California; Courtesy of Sam Francis Foundation, Artwork © 2019 Sam Francis Foundation, California/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Taking a prime position among Sam Francis’s late paintings, Untitled, 1988-1989, envelops the viewer into a galaxy of pure color and gesture. With its sweeping arcs and dynamic spatter of paint equally calling to mind the action painting of Jackson Pollock and the Gutai group, as well as the “fung-ink” style of Japanese calligraphy, this work powerfully evinces how Francis bridged Eastern and Western philosophies and artistic traditions in his practice. Painted in 1988-1989, this monumental painting was created in tandem with its sister work, Untitled, which resides in the collection of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in Japan. Acquired by Miles and Shirley Fiterman shortly afer its execution, Untitled belongs to the ambitious work Francis continued to undertake in the last decade of his life and whose impact is so powerful that William C. Agee declared these works to be “of a physical and expressive magnitude virtually without parallel in the history of modern art” (William C. Agee, “Sam Francis: A Painter’s Dialogue with Color, Light, and Space”, in Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings 1946-1994, Berkeley, 2011, p. 115).
“These are some of Francis’s most powerful paintings, for he was working at a peak of emotional intensity that he perhaps had never attained before…. The resulting works are of a physical and expressive magnitude virtually without parallel in the history of modern art.” William C. Agee
The visceral drips and pourings of paint that animate Untitled bear witness to Francis’s early experimentations in Abstract Expressionism some four decades earlier. While Francis was indeed at frst associated with the New York School, he forged a highly independent path in developing a personal style of abstraction – variously incorporating impulses from the great French tradition of color and light that he encountered living in Paris in the 1950s, as well as inspired by his frequent travels to Japan beginning in 1957. While representing a continuation of many of the core themes in Francis’s practice, late works such as the present one exemplifed a distinct shif in the artist’s practice. As William C. Agee observed, “He had abandoned the touch of Monet, Bonnard, Matisse, and Rothko for a raw, visceral paint surface more in the tradition of van Gogh and the early Still, or a Pollock gone mad...” (William C. Agee, “Sam Francis: A Painter’s Dialogue with Color, Light, and Space”, in Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings 1946-1994, Berkeley, 2011, p. 115). Painted in 1988-1989 at the height of Francis’s international recognition, Untitled exemplifes a palpable energy and exuberant joie-de-vivre that belie the increasing health issues Francis was experiencing at the time. Just as Francis had begun painting in 1945 as a form of therapy afer sufering the onset of spinal tuberculosis, the act of painting here represented an existential afrmation of life in the face of imminent death following his cancer diagnosis in 1989. Defying the inevitable, Francis painted with an energy and extreme physicality that belied the circumstances of his condition in his vast new studio in Venice Beach, Los Angeles. Color, which Francis ofen referred to as lava or molten stone, takes center stage in these so-called “magma-lava paintings”. As William C. Agee has observed “He attacked the canvas, now even larger than before, with massive formations of some of the most powerful and intense color he had ever used. His paint pooled and fowed as if it were molten lava or primal matter” (William C. Agee, “Sam Francis: A Painter’s Dialogue with Color,
Light, and Space”, in Sam Francis: Catalogue Raisonné of Canvas and Panel Paintings 1946-1994, Berkeley, 2011, p. 115). This analogy to nature is perhaps not surprising given Francis’s conception of the expanse of the white canvas as a realm to engage with the elemental and metaphysical forces of creation. Francis was particularly fascinated by the Carl Gustave Jung’s notion of alchemy, taking it as conceptual basis to conceive of painting as the transformation of the ancient elements of earth, water, air and fre. Color, symbolizing the very animating force of life itself, as such becomes the essence and substance of Francis’s abstract paintings. As with many of Francis’s later paintings, Untitled evokes the earth not only through its palette of deep greens and blues, but also through the gestural application of paint. As Pontus Hulten observed of the latter efect, “The power contained is so great that it looks like it would ignite by its own command, like in a volcano or like in an atomic explosion” (Pontus Hulten, Sam Francis, exh. cat., Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 1993, p. 30).This connection takes on deeper meaning when considering that Untitled’s sister painting was created specifcally for the 1989 Hiroshima-themed exhibition at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in Japan. Speaking to Francis’s fascination with Zen Buddhist teachings and the writings of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustave Jung, Untitled exemplifes, as Howard N. Fox has put forward, that “the spiritual – perhaps – mystical basis of Sam Francis’s art is nowhere more manifest than in his last works” (Howard Fox, Sam Francis, The Last Works, exh. cat., Galleri Faurschou, Copenhagen, 1999, p. 12). As with his mandala paintings of the 1970s, Francis here summons the wholeness of the cosmos through the circular composition of gestural, sweeping brushstrokes. The void at its center beckons the viewer to enter the space of the space, vividly calling to mind Francis’s aphorism, “The space at the center of these paintings is reserved for you” (Sam Francis, 1985, quoted in Debra Burchett-Lere, Sam Francis: The Artist’s Materials, Los Angeles, 2019, p. 3).
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120. Franz Kline
1910-1962
Untitled signed “KLINE” lower lef ink on telephone book page mounted on paper 11 7/8 x 9 5/8 in. (30.2 x 24.4 cm.) Executed circa 1950. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Marlborough-Gerson Gallery Inc., New York B.C. Holland, Inc., Chicago William Zierler, Inc., New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
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121. Hans Hofmann
1880-1966
Pilgrim Heights View - Provincetown titled, numbered, inscribed and dated “Pilgrim Hights vue [sic] Provincetown 1936 104” on the reverse oil on board 25 x 30 in. (63.5 x 76.2 cm.) Painted in 1936. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Estate of the Artist André Emmerich Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1988
Exhibited New York, Kootz Gallery, April 27 - May 20, 1953, no. 2 New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Hans Hofmann Retrospective, June 20 - September 16, 1990, no. 45, p. 195 (illustrated, p. 50) Boston University Art Gallery, Provincetown Prospects, The Works of Hans Hofmann and His Students, January 22 - February 27, 1994, pp. 4, 16 Roslyn Harbor, Nassau County Museum of Art, American Vanguards, January 21 - April 28, 1996, p. 90 (illustrated with incorrect orientation, p. 86) West Palm Beach, Norton Gallery & School of Art, 1997 (on extended loan)
Literature Clement Greenberg, “Hans Hofmann: Grand Old Rebel”, ARTNews, vol. 57, no. 9, January 1950, fg. 1, pp. 28, 29 (illustrated, p. 26) Fritz Bultman, “The Achievement of Hans Hofmann”, ARTnews, vol. 62, no. 5, September 1963 (illustrated, p. 44) Cynthia Goodman, Hans Hofmann, New York, 1986, p. 40 Robert Taylor, “Step into ‘Provincetown’ and out of Winter”, Boston Globe, February 11, 1994, pp. A21-A22 Suzi Villiger, ed., Hans Hofmann Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Volume II: 1901-1951, London, 2014, no. 135, p. 84 (illustrated)
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122. Jim Dine
b. 1935
Window Brain oil on wood, burlap and mixed media on card table and found wood rod table element 31 3/4 x 30 1/4 x 4 1/4 in. (80.6 x 76.8 x 10.8 cm.) overall 57 1/2 x 30 1/4 x 4 1/4 in. (146.1 x 76.8 x 10.8 cm.) Executed in 1959. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Gordon Locksley Gallery, Minneapolis Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Violence! in Recent American Art, November 5, 1968 January 12, 1969 Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Until Now, Collecting the New (1960 - 2010), April 16 - August 1, 2010
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123. Willem de Kooning
1904-1997
Untitled signed “de Kooning” lower center oil on newsprint mounted on canvas 29 x 22 3/4 in. (74.9 x 57.8 cm.) Executed in 1976. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance André Emmerich Gallery, New York Private Collection, Toronto Sotheby’s, New York, November 11, 1986, lot 197 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited West Palm Beach, Norton Gallery & School of Art, 1997 (on extended loan)
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124. Willem de Kooning
1904-1997
Untitled signed “de Kooning” lower center charcoal and oil on paper mounted on matboard 42 x 32 7/8 in. (106.7 x 83.5 cm.) Executed circa 1964-1966. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance James Goodman Gallery Inc., New York Acquired from the above by the present owner on May 5, 1988 Exhibited West Palm Beach, Norton Gallery & School of Art, 1997 (on extended loan)
Willem de Kooning, Untitled (Woman), circa 1974. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Digital Image © Whitney Museum of American Art/Licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2019 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Remaining in the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection for over thirty years, Untitled is an extraordinary example of Willem de Kooning’s skilled draughtsmanship in a rare large scale. Exploring the fne line between fguration and abstraction, this work depicts de Kooning’s iconic female nude, with which he was catapulted to fame in the 1950s. Swathes of thick, dark charcoal describe the contours of the woman’s body in rapid, expressive strokes, and the dynamic composition is enlivened by fashes of red and blue paint. Executed in 1964-1966, Untitled is exemplary of the stylistic shif in de Kooning’s practice that coincided with the artist’s move to the Hamptons in the 1960s. If de Kooning’s women from the 1950s appeared violent, now they became more relaxed, expansive and whimsical. Although de Kooning exploits the expressive potential of spatial dislocations and juxtapositions that he perfected in the late 1940s and ’50s, the drawing is divested of the skull-like features and rigid geometry which ofen distinguished his earlier Women paintings. Lynn Cooke observes on the subject of de Kooning’s 1960s drawings: “As in Picasso’s graphic work, a far broader range of situations and moods is permitted. They seem to provide an outlet for the antics of de Kooning’s denizens as well as an occasional arena for rehearsing certain strategies for use later in the oil” (Lynn Cooke, “De Kooning and the Pastoral: The Interrupted Idyll”, Willem de Kooning, exh. cat., Hirschhorn Museum Collection, Washington, D.C., p. 98). Composed of gestural curves, Untitled permeates a primal energy – its animalistic forms suggesting Hellenistic depictions of Bacchic frenzies. As de Kooning told an interviewer in the late 1960s, “Some of my earlier women are violent. They even scare me ... The women I paint now are very friendly and pastoral, like my landscapes, and not so aggressive” (Willem de Kooning, quoted in David L. Shirey, “Art: Don Quixote in Springs”, Newsweek, December 20, 1967, p. 80).
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125. Robert Rauschenberg
1925-2008
Untitled signed with the artist’s initials “R.R.” lower right solvent transfer, gouache, graphite, tape and collage on paper 11 1/2 x 14 1/2 in. (29.2 x 36.8 cm.) Executed in 1967. Estimate $200,000-300,000 Provenance Locksley Shea Gallery, Minneapolis Acquired from the above by the present owner
Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled (Mirror), 1952. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gif of Sarah-Ann and Werner H. Kramarsky, Image courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, Artwork © 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Emblematic of Robert Rauschenberg’s atmospheric blend of text and image, Untitled, 1967, intuitively describes the complexity of reality in all its transitory disorder. The artist’s collages signaled a revolutionary challenge to traditional notions of high art, its legacy reverberating into the present moment. A kind of structure in the disorder of images emerges, refecting the human experience of conferring structure upon the ambient rush of the sights and sounds that constitute everyday life. Rauschenberg’s transfer drawings developed out from the artist’s experiments with appropriation in the early 1950s. By soaking printed reproductions in lighter fuid and rubbing the back of the image with an empty ballpoint pen, Rauschenberg discovered that he could transfer the images to paper. The purpose of this method, the artist explained, was so that “the details should not be taken in at one glance, that you should be able to look from place to place without feeling the bigger image. I had to make a surface which invited a constant change of focus and an examination of detail” (Robert Rauschenberg, quoted in G.R. Swenson, “Rauschenberg Paints a Picture,” ArtNews, April 1963, p. 45). In the 1960s, Rauschenberg began to focus on craf and found materials rather than printed mass-media images, enriching his works with multiple mediums. In Untitled, swathes of vibrant paint intermingle with paper collage atop the transfer drawing, adding a depth and dimension to the ghostly images beneath the page.
“I avoid images that are fxed. You get that and it’s just illustration.” Robert Rauschenberg
The seemingly arbitrary collision of print and image – like glimpses of a familiar scene through a fogged window – is characteristic of Rauschenberg’s practice, yet Untitled holds a clue as to its meaning in the form of a disembodied man’s head on the lef side of the work which strongly resembles the poet Frank O’Hara, a close friend who had died the year prior. In 1967 Rauschenberg created a series of untitled transfer drawings for In Memory of My Feelings, a collection of poems by O’Hara, and it is possible that Untitled comprises a fraction of this homage to Rauschenberg’s lost friend. Yet the elusiveness of this feeting combination - of signs – a car, a seashell, a fragment of text and a shadowed face – keeps Untitled unknowable. As Rauschenberg acknowledged, “Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but I would substitute anything for preconceptions or deliberateness. If that moment can’t be as fresh, strange and unpredictable as what’s going on around you, then it’s false” (Robert Rauschenberg, quoted in Rauschenberg: An Interview with Robert Rauschenberg by Barbara Rose, New York, 1987, p. 58).
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126. John Chamberlain
1927-2011
Tiny Piece #7 painted tin 4 3/4 x 4 1/8 x 3 1/8 in. (12 x 10.5 x 8 cm.) base 11 5/8 x 3 5/8 x 3 1/2 in. (29.5 x 9.3 x 9 cm.) overall 16 3/8 x 7 3/4 x 3 1/2 in. (41.5 x 19.8 x 9 cm.) Executed in 1961. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance Gordon Locksley Gallery, Minneapolis (acquired in 1969) Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Julie Sylvester, John Chamberlain, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculpture 1954-1985, New York, 1986, no. 93, p. 64 (illustrated)
Wrought in twisted, colorful metal atop a corkscrewshaped, carved wooden base, Tiny Piece #7 is an exquisite example of John Chamberlain’s early practice. Executed in 1961, it is the fnal example of only seven works comprising the artist’s Tiny Piece series, of which other examples resides in the collection of Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice and at one point in the private collection of Marcel Duchamp. Perfectly demonstrating how Chamberlain explored notions of scale while working with salvaged automobile parts in the 1960s, these intimately sized works exude much of the same power and expression found in the monumental sculptures Chamberlain would begin creating in the 1970s. Retaining the lightness, directness and spontaneity of the artist’s hand, Chamberlain has here elevated his painted tin sculpture atop a carved wooden base, at once heightening the sense of magnitude contained within the compressed sculpture and playfully infusing the salvaged, found material with a grandeur traditionally associated with classical sculpture. Chamberlain’s tactics of crushing, squeezing, compression and combination have made his work a transitional point between traditions of Abstract Expressionism and Pop art. Chamberlain’s application of vibrant turquoise and orange shades reify the bright, mass-produced colors of the original Detroit-made automobile parts in this work, realizing the saturated pigment of abstract canvases in the three-dimensional form of painted tin. The process of assemblage is characteristic to Chamberlain’s method, which he has described as extremely intuitive and spontaneous in nature, seeking harmony in carefully chosen fragments.
Constantin Brancusi, The Fish, circa 1926. Private Collection/Bridgeman Images
Created the same year as Chamberlain’s inclusion in The Art of Assemblage at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tiny Piece #7 speaks of an artist at the precipice of critical acclaim. Beginning in 1962 Chamberlain showed frequently at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, and in 1964 his work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale. It is testament to Chamberlain’s pioneering practice that Marcel Duchamp, the very pioneer of the readymade, acquired a work from the Tiny Piece series and included it in his seminal 1966 exhibition Homage à Caissa in New York.
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127. Claes Oldenburg
b. 1929
Punching Bag signed with the artist’s initials, titled and dated “punching bag CO 68” on the wood disc canvas stufed with kapok, mounted on wood bag 36 x 18 1/4 in. (91.4 x 46.4 cm.) disc diameter 20 in. (73.7 cm.) overall 50 1/2 x 20 x 19 in. (128.3 x 50.8 x 48.3 cm.) Executed in 1968. This work is accompanied by the drawing Notebook Page: Views of the Punching Bag, circa 1971, acquired directly from the artist by the present owner. Estimate $200,000-300,000 Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Irving Blum Gallery, Los Angeles Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1968) Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Los Angeles, Irving Blum Gallery, Claes Oldenburg, June 2 - August 2, 1968 Pasadena Art Museum, Claes Oldenburg: Object into Monument, December 7, 1971 - February 6, 1972, no. 33 Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Claes Oldenburg: In the Studio, August 2, 1992 - February 14, 1993, no. 51
Claes Oldenburg, Notebook Page: Views of the Punching Bag, circa 1971. 5 x 3 in. (12.7 x 7.6 cm.), which accompanies the present lot.
“I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero....I am for an art that you can hammer with, stitch with, sew with, paste with, fle with...I am for the art of punching and skinned knees and sat-on bananas.” Claes Oldenburg
Executed in 1968, Punching Bag is a quintessential example of Claes Oldenburg’s surrealist infected Pop sculpture practice. Punching Bag developed out of Oldenburg’s fascination with the object in the late 1960s, a remarkably productive period of increasing recognition for the artist in which he became known for his oversized sof sculptures of mundane items such as hamburgers, fags and plugs. Punching Bag is accompanied by a small drawn study from 1971, Notebook Page: Views of the Punching Bag. Acquired by the Fitermans directly from Oldenburg, this work is not only a testament to their enduring friendship with the artist, it also ofers insights into the critical role of drawing in Oldenburg’s artistic process, which begins with an initial series of drawings before moving on to additional drafs, cardboard models and, ultimately, the fnal work. A larger drawing of another work in the series is held by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Oldenburg is known for his appropriation of industrially fabricated objects from the urban environment, recreating them in a range of forms and various scales. The present work is remarkable for its large scale in comparison to other works from the late 1960s, which would continue for the next half decade in the form of sculpture, miniature multiples in boxes and lithographs. This “serialized” repetition of objects, varying in size and scale, is a key component of Oldenburg’s practice, which fgured as a central theme in the 2018 dual exhibition Claes Oldenburg: Shelf Life at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, juxtaposing Oldenburg’s meticulously chosen creations with a selection of 17th century Dutch still life paintings.
Displaced and decontextualized from their normal environment, Oldenburg’s objects are always both metaphorical and richly associative, underscoring the infuence of Surrealist ideas regarding the transformation of the everyday object into something dreamlike and strange. For Oldenburg, Punching Bag suggests the stasis of motion through the contrast of its heavy sack against the smooth wood of the base. Oldenburg writes on the theme: “The Punching Bag is about the drop shape – the state of suspension. Punching bags are suspended from a wooden disk, against which the bag bounces. This disk suggests a halo, or a parasol. The object appears sheltered. That form seemed adaptable to a tomb, a shield, a bag of bones. As a tomb, the Punching Bag reclines, and the drop is shriveled, like a fallen fruit” (Claes Oldenburg, quoted in Claes Oldenburg: Object into Monument, Pasadena, 1971, p. 75). Claes Oldenburg, Proposal for a Tomb in the Form of a Giant Punching Bag - with Obelisk, 1968. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, © Claes Oldenburg
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128. Richard Serra
b. 1938
Untitled signed and dated “R. Serra 72” lower right charcoal on paper 29 5/8 x 41 1/2 in. (75.4 x 105.4 cm.) Executed in 1972. Estimate $80,000-120,000
Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner on April 5, 1972 Exhibited Kassel, Documenta 5, June 30 - October 8, 1972 New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 200 Years of American Sculpture, March 16 September 26, 1976, no. 244, p. 346 Literature Arts Magazine, Summer 1972, p. 41 (illustrated) Richard Serra: Works 66-77, exh. cat., Kunsthalle Tübingen, Tubingen, 1978, no. 199, p. 258 Hans Janssen, Richard Serra: Drawings, Zeichnungen, 1969 - 1990, Salenstein, 1990, no. 43, p. 211
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129. Louise Nevelson
1899-1988
Column IV painted wood 57 1/8 x 14 5/8 x 9 1/4 in. (145 x 37 x 23.5 cm.) Executed in 1983. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Collection of the Artist Art for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze, Exhibition and Silent Auction, October 18 December 23, 1983, lot 17 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
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130. Christo
b. 1935
Orange Store Front (Project) Part I signed, titled and dated “ORANGE STORE FRONT (PROJECT) PART I from double STORE FRONT, Christo 64 - 65” at bottom charcoal, graphite, painted wood, Plexiglas and galvanized metal on panel 17 3/8 x 18 5/8 in. (44 x 47.5 cm.) Executed in 1964-1965, this work is registered in Christo’s archives.
Estimate $30,000-40,000 Provenance Locksley Shea Gallery, Minneapolis Acquired from the above by the present owner
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131. Robert Graham
1938-2008
Source Figure bronze 106 x 24 x 24 in. (269.2 x 61 x 61 cm.) Executed in 1990-1991, this work is from the intended edition of 9 works, of which only 6 were fabricated. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in October 1992
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132. Frank Stella
b. 1936
Misano acrylic on wood, metal and Tycore 64 1/2 x 82 x 10 1/2 in. (163.8 x 208.3 x 26.7 cm.) Executed in 1981. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance M. Knoedler & Co. Inc., New York Private Collection, Connecticut (acquired from the above in 1981) Sotheby’s, New York, May 2, 1989, lot 46 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Frank Stella daringly fouts the conventions of the traditional frame with the bold and monumental Misano, executed in 1981. Among the most signifcant works in Stella’s renowned Circuit series, Misano juxtaposes marigold yellow with deep magenta, emerald green and burnt umber in a seemingly disorderly mass of bright, twisting curves. Produced in an extraordinarily productive period in the early 1980s, during which all of Stella’s attentions were focused on the Circuit series, his largest group of works to date that included 68 aluminum maquettes. In producing the Circuit series, Stella custom-ordered large aluminum reliefs from a factory, then etched and painted crisscrossing parallel lines across the individual metal contours. With these metal forms, Stella experimented with bringing the surface out of the pictorial frame, and his works from the series steadily became more three-dimensional. Misano represents a breakthrough within the Circuits, as the interplay between the painted metal forms of the relief and the negative spaces revealing the wall behind it have completely replaced the conventional, rectangular pictorial window that characterizes the previous models.
Named afer the Misano World Circuit race track in Misano Adriatico, Italy, the present work is dominated by a snake-like arabesque curve, which Stella created using a Flexicurve drafsman’s tool. These curves are ubiquitous in the Circuit series, yet in Misano the curvilinear forms have evolved out of the rectangular, canvas-like outline seen in early Circuit works. As William Rubin observed of its sister work from 1982 “In its exquisite equilibrium of solid and void, its play of open and closed, Misano is one of the most classically ordered of Stella’s metal reliefs… In Misano, the parallels to Pollock are not just a matter of the classical ‘breathing’ in the openings and closings of the confgurational pattern, or the way the disposition of the composition implies its pictorial rectangle, but also of Stella’s ability to handle a multilayered confguration of highly variegated components without slipping into visual congestion” (William Rubin, Frank Stella: 19701987, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, pp. 103-104).
Jackson Pollock, Pasiphaë, 1943. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2019 Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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133. George Segal
1924-2000
Woman with Sunglasses on Bench painted bronze on cast iron bench fgure 47 x 40 x 39 in. (119.4 x 101.6 x 99.1 cm.) bench 31 3/4 x 71 7/8 x 22 in. (80.6 x 182.7 x 55.9 cm.) overall 47 x 71 7/8 x 39 in. (119.4 x 182.7 x 99.1 cm.) Conceived in 1983, this work is from an edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Private Collection Sotheby’s, New York, May 5, 1994, lot 234 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Edward Hopper, Compartment C, Car 293, 1938. Private Collection/Bridgeman Images, Artwork © 2019 Heirs of Josephine Hopper/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Executed in 1987, George Segal’s Woman with Sunglasses on Bench is a striking example of the artist’s acclaimed exploration of fgurative sculpture. Whereas fellow Pop sculptors such as Claes Oldenburg found inspiration in everyday mass-market products, Segal, in contrast, turned inwards to the consumers of culture themselves. Depicting fgures frozen in their everyday rituals, Segal’s iconic white fgures emanate echoes of existential longing which elevate the simple and banal to new heights of artistic expression. With a sly nod to the tradition of plaster casts in classical sculpture, Segal pioneered the use of plaster bandages - typically designed for making orthopedic casts - as a sculptural medium. To create his lifelike plaster sculptures, Segal would wrap his sitters in plaster-soaked gauze, working the thin, fexible material assiduously as it dried on the body, then again afer the model was cut free from the cast. An expressionist painter for twenty years prior to taking up sculpture, a fact that becomes evident in his delicate painterly approach to the plaster in defning select features, while blurring others – Segal constructed portraits that are always deeply personal and individualistic. Reminding us that art can refect rather than perfect those feeting elements of life which might otherwise go unnoticed, Segal’s white sculptures are infused with the artist’s respect for the fragile beauty of human life. As Segal noted perceptively in a 1979 interview, “People have attitudes locked up in their bodies… A person may reveal nothing of himself and then, suddenly, make a movement that contains a whole autobiography,” (George Segal, quoted in Jan van der Marck, George Segal, New York, 1979, p. 33).
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134. Jean Dubufet
1901-1985
Le verre d’eau signed with the artist’s initials and dated “J.D. 1967” lower right marker on paper 23 1/4 x 11 3/4 in. (59.1 x 29.8 cm.) Executed on January 17, 1967. Estimate $20,000-30,000 Provenance Robert Elkon Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Max Loreau, Catalogue des travaux de Jean Dubufet, fascicule XXII: Cartes, Ustensiles, Lausanne, 1972, no. 285, p. 107 (illustrated)
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135. Roberto Matta
1911-2002
Le responsable de l’optimisme signed “Matta” lower lef; further signed, titled and inscribed “le responsable de l’optimisme 201 Matta” on the reverse oil on canvas 23 3/8 x 28 5/8 in. (59.4 x 72.8 cm.) Painted in 1959. Estimate $50,000-60,000 Provenance Perls Galleries, New York Robert Elkon Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
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136. Frank Stella
b. 1936
Untitled (Concentric Square) signed “F. Stella” lower right felt tip pen on graph paper 17 x 22 in. (43.3 x 55.9 cm.) Executed circa 1960s.
Estimate $25,000-35,000 Provenance Robert Elkon Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
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137. Frank Stella
b. 1936
Conway signed with the artist’s initials and dated “F.S. ‘66” lower right colored ink and pencil on graph paper 17 1/8 x 22 in. (43.4 x 56 cm.) Executed in 1966.
Estimate $12,000-18,000 Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Franklin Seiden Gallery, Detroit Acquired from the above by the present owner
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138. Alexander Calder
1898-1976
Meadow Grass signed and dated “Calder 64” lower right gouache and ink on paper 29 1/2 x 42 1/2 in. (75 x 108 cm.) Executed in 1964, this work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A08631.
Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance The Artist Nicholas Guppy, London (acquired from the artist) Christie’s, New York, May 2, 1985, lot 33 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
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139. Alexander Calder
1898-1976
Las Vegas signed and dated “Calder 74” lower right gouache and ink on paper 43 1/4 x 29 1/2 in. (109.9 x 74.9 cm.) Executed in 1974, this work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A12713. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Galerie Maeght, Paris Acquired from the above by the present owner in September 1975
140. Ed Clark
b. 1926
Hot and Cold signed and dated “Clark 07” lower right; signed, titled and dated “07 Ed Clark TITLE HOT & COLD” on the reverse oil on canvas 47 1/4 x 66 1/4 in. (120 x 168.3 cm.) Painted in 2007. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 2007
141. Jiro Takamatsu
1936-1998
Shadow (No. 1400) signed, titled and dated “JIRO TAKAMATSU 1997 No. 1400” on the reverse acrylic on canvas 86 x 115 in. (218.4 x 292.1 cm.) Painted in 1980/1997. Estimate $180,000-250,000 Provenance Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Belonging to the artist’s iconic series of Shadow paintings, Jiro Takamatsu’s Shadow (No. 1400) embodies the series’ inquiry into the formal origins of painting. Although simplifed to ghostly contours simultaneously opaque and transparent, Takamatsu’s subjects retain a certain personality and precision that resemble the phantom fgures seen in a submerged, half-developed photograph. The contours of the fgure of a child are rendered in hazy gray against the stark white canvas, suggesting rather than declaring the presence of the child. Completed just a year before the artist’s death, the image reminds us of the feeting nature of life. As a key member of the Mona-Ha movement and founder of the minimalist art collective Hi Red Center in postwar Tokyo, Takamatsu is renowned as a seminal postwar Japanese artist. In 1964, the artist began the Shadow series afer he became disillusioned with his studies at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, attempting to harken back to the simplicity of the origin of painting. Inspired by images of shadows in 19th-century Japanese woodcuts, and reminiscent of Plato’s seminal cave allegory, Takamatsu instigated Shadow Painting in order to investigate the formal underpinnings of painting and probe his interest in “seeing the act of seeing”, resulting in the series that has become the artist’s most celebrated body of work. In their ofen larger than life format, the shadow paintings ironically literalize the act of a portrait itself, which enshrines a mere refection of its subject in time immemorial. An exceptional example of the series, Shadow (No. 1400) engages the mind in realms of fantasy and memory and questions the possibility of seeing clearly outside of portraiture’s material matrix.
Property of a Private Collector
142. Ed Ruscha
b. 1937
Etc. signed and dated “Ed Ruscha ’90” lower right; further titled, inscribed and dated “‘ETC.’ 1990 #31” on the reverse acrylic on museum board 20 x 30 in. (50.8 x 76.2 cm.) Executed in 1990. Estimate $200,000-300,000 Provenance Anthony d’Ofay Gallery, London Galerie Philippe Rizzo, Paris Private Collection, France Sprüth Magers Lee, London Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited London, Anthony d’Ofay Gallery, Ed Ruscha: New Paintings and a retrospective of works on paper, June 26 – July 30, 1998, p. 44 (illustrated) Literature Ed Ruscha, They Called Her Styrene, London, 2000 (illustrated on the back cover) Lisa Turvey, ed., Edward Ruscha, Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper, Volume 2: 1977 – 1997, New York, 2018, D1990.31, p. 318 (illustrated)
“Sometimes found words are the most pure because they have nothing to do with you. I take things as I fnd them. A lot of these things come from the noise of everyday life.” Ed Ruscha
143. Agnes Martin
1912-2004
Untitled acrylic and graphite on canvas 12 x 12 in. (30.5 x 30.5 cm.) Executed circa 1995. Estimate $350,000-450,000 Provenance The Artist David and Renze Nesbit, New Mexico Renze Nesbit, New Mexico Acquired from the above by the present owner
“When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is just not in the eye. It is in the mind. It is our positive response to life.” Agnes Martin
Literature Tifany Bell, ed., Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings, New York, 2017 - ongoing, no. 1996.023, online (illustrated)
Painted over a quarter century afer Agnes Martin’s move to Taos, New Mexico, Untitled, circa 1995, is a classic example of the artist’s iconic square-format, serene, near- monochromatic grid paintings. The delicate graphite tracks of Martin’s pencil sketch horizontal bars across the canvas, while fne, translucent layers of acrylic are built up on a chalky gesso ground to create a luminescent ivory surface. The result is a painting both tranquil and utterly engrossing – like the hypnotic hum of a monastic chant, Untitled encapsulates infnity in a single cadence. Precise, penciled lines divide the 12-by-12-inch canvas into a geometric tripartite composition, embodying Martin’s mathematical approach to content, a style she had perfected in the late 1960s. As a young painter living in New York, Martin suffered from deteriorating mental stability and was eventually committed to Bellevue Asylum in 1968. Upon her release, she decided to move to Taos, New Mexico in search of a soothing, transcendent art. Like Yayoi Kusama, known for her obsessive repetition of
geometric motifs, Martin’s endless repetition of pale, structured canvases can be interpreted as a search for tranquility and control over her inflamed mind. In the clean, quiet light of New Mexico, Martin turned to Eastern philosophy and let go of all intellectual positions in favor of an awareness of the beauty she called “the inner mind”, perfectly embodied in the completely abstract, mantra-like Untitled. The horizontal bands, painted rosy white, add a liquid depth to the shimmering eggshell surface, which evokes the calm horizons of her surroundings in New Mexico. Yet while many have read Martin’s paintings as landscapes in the colors of the deserts, for Martin herself they were exclusively refective of emotional states. “If you were at the beach and keenly aware of the shining waves, the fragrant air, the freedom of mind, feeling happy and free – that is reality. That is life,” Martin described in a 1979 lecture at the University of Santa Fe (Agnes Martin, quoted in “The Current of the River of Life Moves Us”, in Agnes Martin: Paintings, Writings, Remembrances, London, 2012, p. 166).
144. Carmen Herrera
b. 1915
Untitled signed and dated “Carmen Herrera - 2013” on the stretcher acrylic on canvas 20 1/8 x 20 1/8 x 2 1/2 in. (51 x 51 x 6.5 cm.) Painted in 2013. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance Lisson Gallery, London Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2014
“My quest is for the simplest of pictorial resolutions.” Carmen Herrera
Exemplifying Carmen Herrera’s hard-edge, minimalist aesthetic, Untitled encapsulates the richly colored verve and precision the artist is known for. Painted in 2013, Untitled presents a powerful continuation of the artist’s seminal Blanco y Verde series, now widely celebrated as Herrera’s most signifcant body of work in her 80-year career and instantly recognizable for its color felds activated by white and green triangular forms. Breaking ground at the same time as artists such as Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly, Herrera’s Blanco y Verde series, 1959-1971, formed a focal point of the 2016 exhibition Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York that was key in confrming the artist’s justly deserved place as a landmark post-war abstractionist. Reprising the key tenets of this series more than four decades later at age 74, Herrera, with Untitled, masterfully demonstrates the unabated rigor of her practice. A perfectly calibrated force feld of pure form and color, Untitled speaks of Herrera’s goal of foregrounding the materiality of the canvas and distilling the composition to its purest essentials. While focusing the viewer’s attention on the materiality of the painting-as-object, the triangular forms of her Blanco y Verde series also appear as if cut in the canvas. In the present work, the isometric triangle stretching across the center of the composition resembles a precisely delineated
cut – suggesting a depth that projects beyond the confnes of the picture plane in a manner that echoes Lucio Fontana’s Spatial Concepts. Untitled powerfully articulates Herrera’s desire to transform abstract line into three-dimensional form, which had driven her to further develop the Blanco y Verde painting in sculptural form. According to Herrera, the Blanco y Verde paintings were “really crying out to become sculpture” (Carmen Herrera, quoted in Dana Miller, “Carmen Herrera: Sometimes I Win”, in Carmen Herrera: Lines of Sight, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2016, p. 30). Paintings such as the present one are closely linked to the monochromatic Estructuras (Structures) sculptures Herrera began creating in the late 1960s, but were not fully realized in their entirety until 2012. Executed a year later, Untitled demonstrates the fruits of Herrera’s prolonged process between painting and sculpture. In the words of art critic Robert Storr, “Maybe one should think of Herrera’s drawings and paintings…as jewels mined from an apparently inexhaustible seam of crystals that, once brought to light from the depths of her imagination, never fail to sparkle and surprise” (Robert Storr, “Abstraction’s Miraculous Perennial”, in Carmen Herrera, exh. cat., Lisson Gallery, London, 2016, p. 27).
145. Ellsworth Kelly
1923-2015
Coral Leaf (1) signed, titled, inscribed and dated “1/13 CORAL LEAF Kelly 1987” on the reverse graphite on paper 28 x 22 in. (71.1 x 55.9 cm.) Executed in 1987. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Blum Helman Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1987 Exhibited New York, Blum Helman Gallery, Ellsworth Kelly: Coral Leaf Drawings, May - June 1987
“I did not want to ‘invent’ pictures, so my sources were in nature, which to me includes everything seen.” Ellsworth Kelly
146. Yayoi Kusama
b. 1929
Accretion (No. 1) signed and dated “1964 Kusama” lower right; further signed, titled, and dated “1964 Kusama ACCRETION (No 1)” on the reverse photo and paper collage mounted on paper 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm.) Executed in 1964, this work will be accompanied by a registration card issued by the artist’s company. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Paula Cooper Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from a Distinguished New York Collection
147. Louise Nevelson
1899-1988
City Series painted wood, in 4 parts overall 96 1/2 x 133 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. (245.1 x 338.5 x 5.7 cm.) lef 96 1/2 x 40 1/4 x 2 in. (245 x 102.2 x 5.1 cm.) center lef 96 1/2 x 33 3/8 x 1 7/8 in. (245 x 84 x 4.9 cm.) center right 96 1/2 x 40 x 2 in. (245.1 x 101.6 x 5.1 cm.) right 96 1/2 x 33 1/4 x 2 1/4 in. (245.1 x 84.6 x 5.7 cm.) Executed in 1974. Estimate $200,000-300,000 Provenance Estate of the Artist Pace Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Naples Museum of Art, Louise Nevelson, January 14 April 29, 2012 Literature Germano Celant, Louise Nevelson, Milan, 2012, no. 383, p. 371 (illustrated, p. 255)
“When I look at the city from my point of view, I see New York City as a great big sculpture.� Louise Nevelson
148. Joan Miró
1893-1983
Untitled III signed “Miró” lower right; further signed, titled and dated “30/XI/’64 III MIRÓ 30/XI/64 III” on the reverse gouache, watercolor, watercolor crayon, pastel and collage on paper 29 1/8 x 42 5/8 in. (73.9 x 108.2 cm.) Executed on November 30, 1964, this work is accompanied by a photo certifcate of authenticity issued by Mr. Jacques Dupin. Estimate $300,000-400,000 Provenance Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris Private Collection, France Private Collection, Spain (acquired from the above in 2016) Exhibited Barcelona, Galeria Barcelona; Olot, Galeria d’Art Arcardi Calzada, Escultures, pintures, guaches i dibuixos de Joan Miró, December 1998 - March 1999, pp. 70-71 (illustrated) Literature Jacques Dupin and Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue Raisonné. Drawings, Volume III: 1960 - 1972, Paris, 2012, no. 1808, p. 94 (illustrated)
Executed in 1964, Untitled III is a lyrical black-paper manifestation of the cosmic landscape collages that Joan Miró returned to again and again throughout his oeuvre. Star-like markings in chalky white gouache and pastel allude to the celestial, while cut-out paper fragments dance across the stark, black paper surface. Miró delights in the contrast between textures and brushstrokes – an orange circle gliding over cryptic text, red paint on a rectangular white prism, a torn French magazine advertisement – which shine brightly out of the black paper like extraterrestrial bodies in a dark night sky. Miró was entranced by the constellations, and his retreat to an imaginary world of the cosmos can be traced to the end of World War II, when he became a part of a generation of artists who withdrew from the traumatic violence wrought by war. In 1964, Miró was living under Franco’s Spain and had begun
producing increasingly political variations of his surreal compositions. The date and subject of Untitled III suggests it may be related to Miró’s 1964 painting Message from a Friend, which depicts an amorphous black shape in space. In a 1964 interview, Miró told the French writer Yvon Taillandier that the painting was about an apocalyptic dream Miró had had in which, “humanity could die, but would not die out completely. A part of it would survive to fy of to the stars” (Yvon Taillandier, “Pour une cosmogonie de Miró”, XXe Siècle, vol. 24, December 1964, p. 111). While the journey into the cosmos is paradigmatic of Miró’s most notable works, Untitled III indicates a compositional blend of traditional Miró motifs with the infuence of international aesthetic trends. Following the example of the postwar movement Art Informel, which allowed for a very emotional, largescale way of working, Miró’s art became less detailed. In consequence, Untitled III eschews the intricate decorative motifs of earlier works for a bold evocation of the artist’s dreamscape. The milky paint splashed across the upper right represents Miró’s own version of drip painting, which he had admired in Jackson Pollock’s work. Combining playful irreverence with a masterly understanding of surrealist form, Untitled III is a scintillating example of the artist’s persistent experimentation and exploration of the relationship between the fgurative and the surreal.
Property from a Distinguished New York Collection
149. Pablo Picasso
1881-1973
Femme en buste (Marie-Thérèse) Conté crayon on vellum 19 x 24 7/8 in. (48.3 x 63.3 cm.) Executed in 1939, this work is accompanied by a photocertifcate issued by Maya-Widmaier Picasso. The Comité Picasso confrmed the authenticity of this work on June 19, 1987. Estimate $300,000-500,000 Provenance Collection of Mary Callery, Paris Galerie Ile de France, Paris The Pace Gallery, New York (acquired from the above in October 1973) James Goodman Gallery, New York (acquired from the above in October 1980) Julian Schnabel, New York (acquired by 1999) PaceWildenstein, New York Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in September 2009) Acquired from the above by the present owner in December 2009 Exhibited New York, The Pace Gallery, Works on Paper, December 4, 1974 - January 4, 1975 New York, The Drawing Center; Los Angeles, Hammer Museum of Art, University of California, Drawn from Artists’ Collections, April 24 - September 26, 1999, p. 123
Identifed by Maya Widmaier-Picasso as a portrait of her mother Marie-Thérèse Walter, Femme en buste (Marie-Thérèse), January 1939, was executed at a time when Pablo Picasso frequently portayed two of his muses: Marie-Thérèse, his lover since 1927, and Dora Maar, a French painter and poet who had become his new mistress in the latter half of the 1930s. Though proliferating pictures of Picasso’s two primary models ofen converged during this period, a myriad of pencil studies of Marie-Thérèse, as well as the artist’s Femme alongée lisant from 1939, Musée Picasso, Paris, have helped in identifying the subject matter of the present work, as well as its precise date of execution. Formerly in the collection of the artist Julian Schnabel, Femme en buste (Marie-Thérèse) is a quintessential example of Picasso’s distinctive approach to portraiture, increasingly vested with deformation, physical dislocations and drastic abstraction, as a result of his continued interest in the Surrealist milieu. It furthermore allows a peek into the artist’s particular sensitivity towards Marie-Thérèse, whom he consistently portrayed as a luminous presence. A delectable image exuding lyrical calm and beauty, Femme en buste (Marie-Thérèse) is emblematic of Picasso’s vision of Marie-Thérèse. As opposed to Dora, whom he painted with the dark and ominous traits that characterized her high wit and heated temper, MarieThérèse was always illustrated as a pristine beauty, whose pale features and primeval blonde locks echoed her composed countenance. Residing in the same home and sharing a family with the artist since 1934, MarieThérèse symbolized peacefulness, stability and quiet domesticity, as evidenced in the present work’s gentle forms and unthreatening abstraction. “Dora would be the public companion, Marie-Thérèse and Maya continued to incarnate private life” Pierre Daix wrote. “Painting would be shared between them... Each woman would epitomize a particular facet of a period rich in increasingly dramatic repercussions” (Pierre Daix, Picasso: Life and Art, New York, 1993, p. 239).
150. Pablo Picasso
1881-1973
Buste de femme assise dans un fauteuil signed “Picasso” lower lef; further inscribed and dated “Royan 01.6.40” lower right india ink on paper 8 7/8 x 7 1/2 in. (22.5 x 18.9 cm.) Executed on June 1, 1940, this work is accompanied by a photo certifcate issued by Claude Picasso dated 2013. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris Private Collection (acquired circa 1975) Private Collection (thence by descent) Private Collection, Europe Literature Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, vol. 10, Paris, 1959, no. 584, p. 174 (illustrated) The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, and Sculpture, Europe at War, 1939-1940, San Francisco, 1998, no. 40-403, p. 197 (illustrated)
“To draw, you must close your eyes and sing.” Pablo Picasso
Matt Dike and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Los Angeles, circa 1986. Photo by Salomon Emquies.
This selection of works by Jean-Michel Basquiat from the Collection of Matt Dike not only provides insights into the artist’s remarkable draughtsmanship, it also puts the extraordinary legacy of Matt Dike into the spotlight. DJ-extraordinaire and co-founder of the legendary West Coast label Delicious Vinyl, Dike is widely celebrated as transforming the LA music scene within the course of a single decade. Paving the way for the explosion of hip hop in the 1990s, Dike was behind such hits as Tone Loc’s Wild Thing, Young MC’s Bust A Move and the Beastie Boy’s groundbreaking album Paul’s Boutique. Having moved to Los Angeles from New York in 1980, Dike within the course of just seven years transformed the L.A. music scene and the reach of hip hop at large. His adept ear, sampling skills and encyclopedic knowledge of music made him an extraordinary club DJ. It was on the strength of Dike’s DJ-ing that the impromptu parties he initiated with Jon Sidel in the mid-1980s coalesced into the notorious Power Tools club, which attracted the likes of Andy Warhol and David Bowie. In 1987 Dike closed Power Tools and co-founded Delicious Vinyl with Michael Ross, a fellow hip hop afcionado whom he had met in his early 20ies at the legendary Rhythm Room. Working from Dike’s apartment, the upstart label quickly made hip hop history by championing artists from the streets. The works on paper from the collection of Matt Dike speak of the intense bond Dike and Basquiat shared in life, as in work. Dike had frst met Basquiat in the late 1970s at a party in the infamous Weinstein dormitory at NYU, where the record label Def Jam would be founded. If Basquiat was then still an underground
artist emblazoning the streets with his unique grafti under the pseudonym SAMO, playing music with his band “Gray” and DJing Manhattan clubs, by the time he and Dike met again he had been catapulted to art world fame. It was in the spring of 1982, when Basquiat travelled to Los Angeles for his frst solo show at the Gagosian Gallery, that the two met again. Dike – then working at the gallery during the day – became Basquiat’s designated chaufeur and eventually his studio assistant. Dike forged an intense and lasting friendship with Basquiat over the years – perhaps no surprise given their shared sensibilities. Basquiat possessed a remarkably encyclopedic knowledge of music, approaching his medium of painting and drawing with a sampling approach indebted to jazz, bebop and hip hop. Basquiat frequently stayed at Dike’s Hollywood apartment/ recording studio during his visits to L.A. The works by Jean-Michel Basquiat from the Collection of Matt Dike not only ofer long overdue insights into the crucial role Dike played in Basquiat’s life and career, they also provide an apt lens to reconsider Basquiat’s story as a truly bicoastal one – one in which Los Angeles ofered the artist the freedom and the inspiration he sought while grappling with the pressures of fame and success. Dike, at the height of his own incredible success, retreated from public life to his Echo Park home – leaving Delicious Vinyl and relinquishing sole ownership to Mike Ross in 1992. He never parted with the works by Basquiat in his collection, which today ofer us intriguing insights into the whirlwind decade of the 1980s.
Works on Paper in the Oeuvre of Jean-Michel Basquiat Fred Hofman, PhD
Fred Hofman, PhD, worked closely with Jean-Michel Basquiat during the artist’s residency in Venice, California in the early 1980s. He has written extensively on Basquiat’s practice, most recently authoring The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, published in 2017. Jean-Michel Basquiat distinguished himself from his contemporaries by the number of works on paper he executed, as well as by the level of artistic achievement he realized in the medium. In nine years of art production, Basquiat created an astounding number of works on paper, including many masterworks rivaling his paintings. For most contemporary painters, the process of drawing is a means of working out pictorial solutions to be integrated into a painting. With the exception of Picasso, Basquiat was one of the few acclaimed painters of the 20th century that invested the same time and energy to works on paper that they did in their painting. Basquiat did not make “studies” to work out ideas or themes to apply to a more complete work of art. Basquiat discovered that drawing was a process of “channeling” in which he essentially functioned as a medium, without editing, prioritizing, or judgment. Basquiat’s natural tendency was to treat each drawing as a discrete work of art that could stand on its own. In many ways, Basquiat felt most at ease when working on paper. He could work on paper virtually anywhere, at any time, without needing studio space. One of my most indelible impressions of Basquiat is that he always seemed to be at work. Whether in a restaurant, car, or hotel room, he ofen had an oil paint stick or pencil in his hand, and a sheet of paper. Basquiat was regularly on the move. As a traveling young artist, it was common practice for Basquiat to undertake works on paper—a fexible, portable medium—enabling him © Fred Hofman/2019
to create while fulflling his need to explore. Holed up in a hotel room, Basquiat spent a good deal of time with his drawing materials. There is no precise documentation of the number of works on paper Basquiat executed between 1980 and 1988. It is my estimation that Basquiat produced approximately 1000 works on paper. Of the known works on paper, close to half were produced in just two years, 1982 and 1983. The four works on paper from the collection of Matt Dike date to these years. With the exception of The Daros Suite of 32 drawings Basquiat produced in 1982–1983, none of the works on paper produced by Basquiat were titled by the artist, and only a very few were signed. While an evaluation of the artist’s works on paper reveals a tremendous range of subject matter and techniques utilized in their production, what is especially striking is the intensity of focus conveyed in many of these works. When Basquiat was working on a sheet of paper, he was either on the foor, seated at a table, or reclining on a bed or couch. The paper upon which he was working would have been beneath his head and his focus down, away from the environment around him so that he could be completely immersed in the work. For Basquiat, drawing began with conscious as well as unconscious observation and processing of source material. He approached this with eyes and mind wide open, constantly absorbing, rarely judging. His sources were an amalgamation of his own personal experiences combined with his continually inquisitive engagement with a plethora of subjects: world history, mythology, scientifc data, sports, music personalities and history, anthropology, human anatomy and physiology, and non-Western cultures. Basquiat also used the drawing medium to express his awareness of more elusive, less tangible aspects of our human experience.
Jean-Michel Basquiat DJing at Area, New York, 1985. Photo © Ben Buchanan/Bridgeman Images
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151. Jean-Michel Basquiat
1960-1988
Untitled (Red/Black Figure) oilstick on Arches paper 22 x 19 1/2 in. (55.9 x 49.5 cm.) Executed in 1982. Estimate $400,000-600,000 Provenance Matt Dike (acquired directly from the artist) Thence by descent to the present owner
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1982. Collection of Leo Malca.
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152. Jean-Michel Basquiat
1960-1988
Untitled (Standing Male Figure) felt-tip pen, crayon and colored pencil on paper 17 7/8 x 12 in. (45.4 x 30.5 cm.) Executed circa 1982-1983. Estimate $700,000-1,000,000 Provenance Matt Dike (acquired directly from the artist) Thence by descent to the present owner
Executed at the apex of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s prodigious career, Untitled (Standing Male Figure) seethes with the emotional expressivity and palpable energy that distinguishes it as an exceptional masterwork on paper. Created in the seminal years of 1982 and 1983, Untitled (Standing Male Figure) puts forth a raw and existential portrait of a full-length fgure who confronts the viewer with a gaze that is equally tortured and prophetic. Drawn with confdent felt-tip pen, crayon and pencil lines, the work speaks to the assured hand of a fully mature artist who at merely 20 years of age had burst onto the New York art scene, following his inclusion in the watershed Times Square Show in June 1980 and the New York/New Wave exhibition at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City in February 1981. Held in the collection of Matt Dike for over three decades, Untitled (Standing Male Figure) reminds us of Basquiat’s enduring legacy that is currently being celebrated at The Brant Foundation in New York. It was above all Basquiat’s re-introduction of the human fgure into contemporary art that garnered him widespread acclaim. “Basquiat’s canon,” as Kellie Jones has indeed noted, “revolves around single heroic fgures: athletes, prophets, warriors, cops, musicians, kings and the artist himself” (Kellie Jones, “Lost in
Translation: Jean-Michel in the (Re)Mix”, in Basquiat, exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2005, p. 43). Untitled (Standing Male Figure) presents us with such a single heroic fgure, here rendered with dreadlocks that suggest it may in fact be a self-portrait of the artist. While the stick-like fgure points to his fascination with comic books, it also points to the wealth of inspiration Basquiat found in ancient pictographs. Works such as the present one demonstrate the incredibly mature pictorial idiom of Basquiat’s breakthrough work, one that built upon his lifelong fxation with drawing. For Basquiat, drawing was akin to a performative act – it was not simply the means of working out pictorial solutions to be integrated into a painting, rather, each drawing presented a discrete work in of itself. The present work pulsates with the unbridled immediacy that the act of drawing provided him: the expressive lines evidence the swif and sure movements with which Basquiat would feverishly move his hand across the paper. It is in works such as Untitled (Standing Male Figure) that we recognize how, As Dieter Buchhart argued, “Basquiat’s works [in 1983] achieved their greatest complexity, in terms of both subject matter and artistic strategies” (Dieter Buchhart, “Against All Odds”, Now’s The Time, exh. cat., Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, 2015, p. 20).
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Figure with Blue Head), 1982 Fred Hofman, PhD Untitled (Figure with Blue Head) is one of the most unique works on paper in the oeuvre of Jean-Michel Basquiat. In fact, there is no other comparable work on paper. The irregular edge of the sheet of paper separates this work from other drawings. Afer having drawn both the fgure and the surrounding array of linear markings, the artist tore away portions of the edge of the paper, resulting in an even more intense focus on the fgure’s gestures and emotive expression. Basquiat’s paring down of the sheet was highly considered and deliberate; these were not random actions. The resulting edges of the work are of equal intentional consequence as the artist’s application of colored oil paint stick and India ink. In many ways, Untitled (Figure with Blue Head) has more in common with Basquiat’s 1982 painting practice than with his works on paper. One could even make the case that this work is more a painting on paper than a drawing. While the work is executed in oil paint stick, the fgure is built up, much like his paintings, from the layering of multiple applications of an array of colorful hues. The ways in which Basquiat has built up his fgure, at least partially resulting in a tactile form, is consistent with the artist’s use of brushwork.
energy. It almost feels like this fgure is on fre from the inside, internally erupting from below the pelvic region all the way up to its neck. What results from this energetic force is the illumination of the fgure’s head, depicted as an activated blue mass. That the energy suggested in the fgure’s interior is both stronger and subtler than something physical, is made evident in Basquiat’s placement of a nimbus above his fgure’s head. Basquiat’s depiction of the movement of an energetic force was his means of capturing psycho-spiritual transformation, and the resulting sanctifcation of his fgure. This is a fgure in the act of transcendence, moving beyond the realm of fesh into the realm of spirit. Untitled (Figure with Blue Head) indicates that from the outset, Basquiat was fascinated by greater realities than meet the eye. This work presents the unique X-ray-like vision he brought to his subjects, breaking down the dichotomy between the external and the internal. As Untitled (Figure with Blue Head) demonstrates, JeanMichel Basquiat’s breakthroughs would occur in direct relationship to his ability to penetrate intuitively the façade of physical form and appearance, and allow other truths and realities to surface.
Basquiat’s rendering of the fgure’s chest cavity further links this work to key paintings executed by the artist around this same period of 1982-1983. This portion of the fgure’s anatomy has been opened up, revealing neither anatomical structure nor physiological functions. Rather, the artist has portrayed the fgure’s central channel of energy—something subtler, not necessarily observable. Basquiat treats this aspect of his fgure as something real, full of power and energy. This aspect of Basquiat’s fgure links it to the central fgures in two major paintings, Philistines, 1982, and Notary, 1983. In both paintings Basquiat has torn open the chest cavity, exposing and revealing the spinal column, the conveyor of stimuli to the brain. In Untitled (Figure with Blue Head), the artist has also exposed the chest cavity; now however, the central channel is much broader and intensely pulsating with
© Fred Hofman/2019
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Philistines, 1982. Private Collection.
153. Jean-Michel Basquiat 1960-1988 Untitled (Figure with Blue Head) oilstick and India ink on Arches paper 21 x 15 in. (53.3 x 38.1 cm.) Executed in 1983. Estimate $500,000-700,000 Provenance Matt Dike (acquired directly from the artist) Thence by descent to the present owner
154. Jean-Michel Basquiat
1960-1988
Untitled (Insect Order) graphite on paper 30 x 22 3/8 in. (76.2 x 56.8 cm.) Executed circa 1982-1983. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance Matt Dike (acquired directly from the artist) Thence by descent to the present owner
“The way he would hold a pencil…He wouldn’t hold it in a formal way. He would stick it through the fourth fnger…so that when he drew, the pencil would just kind of slip out of his hand. He’d let it go that way, then grab it and bring it down, then let it drift. It was amazing, this whole dance he did with the pencil.” Fab 5 Freddy
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection, New York
155. Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Map of Eastern U.S.S.R. Missile Bases (Positive) stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York, initialed “VF” and numbered “PA10.583” on the overlap acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas 58 x 80 in. (147.3 x 203.2 cm.) Executed in 1985-1986. Estimate $700,000-1,000,000 Provenance The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York Stellan Holm Gallery, New York Gagosian Gallery, New York Private Collection (acquired from the above in 2007) Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2014 Exhibited New York, Van de Weghe Fine Art, Andy Warhol: Black & White Paintings 1985-86, October 14 - November 23, 2005 New York, Gagosian Gallery, Cast a Cold Eye: The Late Work of Andy Warhol, October 25 - December 22, 2006, p. 181 (illustrated)
Executed in 1985-1986, Map of the Eastern U.S.S.R. Missile Bases (Positive) exemplifes Andy Warhol’s return to the subversive content and style of his earliest work in very last years of his life. Executed in the waning years of the Cold War, the depiction of U.S.S.R. missile bases reads initially as banal, then as chilling as its ominous implication as a document of war becomes clear to the viewer. An iconic example from Warhol’s Black-and-White Ads and Illustrations series, the present work belongs to the discrete sub-group of canvases based on a print media illustration of a U.S.S.R. missile bases map. While Warhol explored the imagery on the more intimate format of 16 x 20 inch canvas, here he has magnifed it to an epic scale, with a sly nod to the grand tradition of war painting. Map of the Eastern U.S.S.R. Missile Bases (Positive) is one of the
“The ghosts of Warhol’s past reside within these canvases...More than much of his recent work, these canvases give evidence of Warhol’s continued evolution as an artist. They all give you something to look at, a combination of decoration and provocation that stops you in your tracks, however briefy. They all have a nervy, challenging air that dares us to take them seriously while also leaving us little choice but to do so.” Roberta Smith
few monumental paintings from this body of work, another example of which resides in the collection of the Tate Modern, London, and another recently featuring as a highlight of the acclaimed retrospective Andy Warhol, From A to B and Back Again at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, which was key in shedding new light on the continuum between Warhol’s early and late work. Consisting of silkscreen reproductions of newspaper clippings, the Black-and-White Ads and Illustrations represented Warhol’s return to both his origins as an illustrator in the late 1950s, and his hand-copied advertisements and cartoons of the early 1960s. It was through his collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1983 that Warhol returned to brushpainting afer years of abstinence; a commission by gallerist Andy Warhol, Hammer and Sickle, 1976. Museum Brandhorst, Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlungen, Munich, Germany. Photo credit: bpk Bildagentur/Brandhorst, Bayerische Staatsgemaeldesammlungen/Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Ronad Feldman in 1984 for a series of paintings and prints based on ads sowed the seeds for his black and white drawings and paintings. Created by tracing advertisements and newspaper illustrations by hand and then silkscreening the imagery onto canvas, these paintings are lent a graphic, hand-painted appearance reminiscent of his early works. As Roberta Smith indeed noted when reviewing works from this series at Warhol’s posthumous exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, “They sum up the elasticity of the Warhol formula: his combination of iconoclastic taste and seductively conventional touch, his brilliant use of a silkscreen technique to both disavow and approximate the look of handmade drawings and paintings,” (Roberta Smith, “7 of Warhol’s Final Paintings”, The New York Times, October 7, 1987, online.) Though Warhol turned towards the seemingly mundane imagery of newspaper advertisements and illustrations with this series, his choice of imagery reveals a deep exploration of themes of war, death and religion. If Warhol had obliquely explored the rise of communism with his Hammer and Sickles series in the late 1970s, here he unfinchingly confronts the viewer with the Cold War crisis in the wake of Ronald Regan’s “evil empire” speech of 1983, in which he called for a “Strategic Defense Initiative” to “defend America from Soviet Missiles.” The sinister implications of the missile map recall Warhol’s famous Atomic Bomb, 1965, which presents the seemingly endless repetition of a newspaper image of an exploding hydrogen bomb in saturated blood red. While harkening in theme back to his Death and Disaster series from the 1960s, Warhol with the present work zooms in on the threat of the atomic bomb
in a more clinical fashion – confronting the viewer with the horrifying threat of nuclear war within the form of an innocent, comic book-like drawing. Indeed, it is only upon closer consideration that the viewer recognizes the ominous portent underlying what is essentially a document of war. The stark black and white schema underpinning this series not only points to its origins in print media, but also hints at the ethical and political poles of good and evil that Warhol explored in the series through “positive” (white) and “negative” (black) variations of the theme. In the deadpan emptiness of its appropriation, absent of any commentary from the author, Map of the Eastern U.S.S.R. Missile Bases suggests a creeping malaise running underneath the artifcial American skin – it implies a society blind to the political reality and potential violence of the Cold War. As Warhol wrote: “America always begins with Moods… But the trouble with moods is that they’re always changing, sometimes really fast… That’s why the American government and the American media are so great. The President, the news magazines, television – they only want to capture America’s mood at the moment, refect it back, and tell anyone who’s not in the same mood to get over it and start feeling American like everyone else” (Andy Warhol, America, New York, 1985, p. 152). At the heart of this ambivalent commentary is not only the thought that the government is duplicitous in manipulating national feeling, but that to “feel American” is to be homogenous – a concept at the core of Warhol’s varied depictions of postwar American society.
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection, New York
156. Robert Rauschenberg
1925-2008
Bottoms (Syn-Tex Series) signed, titled and dated “BOTTOMS RAUSCHENBERG 70” lower right graphite, gouache, solvent transfer and printed paper collage on paper 40 x 27 1/2 in. (101.6 x 69.8 cm.) Executed in 1970. Estimate $120,000-180,000 Provenance Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles Collection of Michael Crichton (acquired from the above in 1976) Christie’s, New York, May 12, 2010, lot 109 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited New York, Visual Arts Gallery, School of Visual Arts, Robert Rauschenberg: New Works, November 17 - December 16, 1970; then traveled as Art Institute of Chicago, Robert Rauschenberg: Syn-Tex Series, January 4 - 23, 1971; Minneapolis, Dayton’s Gallery 12, Robert Rauschenberg: Syn-Tex Series and Cardbirds, Constructions, June 1971 Washington, D.C., National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution; New York, The Museum of Modern Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Bufalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Art Institute of Chicago, Robert Rauschenberg, October 30, 1976 January 15, 1978, no. 116, p. 131 (illustrated) San Diego State University, University Gallery, Selections from the Michael Crichton Collection, April 25 - June 1, 1980, p. 14 (illustrated) Claremont, Pomona College, Montgomery Art Gallery, Prints and Drawings from the Michael Crichton Collection, November - December 1980 New York, Rosa Esman Gallery, Collector’s Choice, December 1985 - January 1986 Los Angeles, Margo Leavin Gallery, 25 Years: An Exhibition of Selected Works, September 23 October 28, 1995
157. John Wesley
b. 1928
Bumstead’s Foot signed, titled and dated “‘BUMSTEAD’S FOOT’ JohN Wesley 1991” on the reverse acrylic on canvas 49 7/8 x 41 7/8 in. (126.7 x 106.6 cm.) Painted in 1991. Estimate $120,000-180,000 Provenance Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2008 Exhibited New York, Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, John Wesley: The Bumsteads, exh. cat., December 15, 2006 February 3, 2007, p. 50 (illustrated) Literature John Wesley, exh. cat., Fondazione Prada, Venice, 2009, no. 530, p. 522 (illustrated, p. 329)
158. Roy Lichtenstein
1923-1997
Purist Painting with Dice signed and dated “rf Lichtenstein ’75” on the reverse oil and Magna on canvas 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm) Painted in 1975. Estimate $450,000-650,000 Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Galerie Aronowitsch, Stockholm Blum Helman Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1978 Literature Jack Cowart, Roy Lichtenstein: 1970-1980, exh. cat., St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, 1981, p. 90 (illustrated)
Amédée Ozenfant, Still Life with Bottles, 1922. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, Digital Image © 2019 Museum Associates/LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY
With Purist Painting with Dice, Roy Lichtenstein puts forward a striking still life that revives 20th century modernism through a Pop art lens. Painted in 1975, this work belongs to the acclaimed series of Purist Paintings with which Lichtenstein paid homage to the post-Cubist movement of Purism, another example of which resides in the Broad Museum, Los Angeles. Taking the pared-down still lifes of such artists as Fernand Léger as a point of departure to explore form, color and line, Lichtenstein has here built a tightly cropped composition depicting a pitcher and two dice. Rendered with Lichtenstein’s characteristic zones of striping and planes of green and blue color, Purist Painting with Dice beautifully demonstrates Lichtenstein’s slick, distilled aesthetic and intuitive formal balance.
An ambitious departure from the Ben-Day dot paintings that had catapulted Lichtenstein to fame in the 1960s, Purist Painting with Dice exemplifes how Lichtenstein, in the 1970s, turned to the art historical canon – creating a remarkably varied and imaginative body of work in which the subject of the still life fgured powerfully. While Lichtenstein created a number of still life paintings in the 1960s, beginning in 1972 his investigation became what John Wilmerding has described, “more wide-ranging and adventurous in its reinterpretations of the work of both major fgures and less-discussed modern masters” (John Wilmerding, Roy Lichtenstein, Still Lifes, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2010, p. 10).
Having embarked on a series of Cubist inspired stilllives in 1973, Lichtenstein turned to Purism in 1975 – efectively emulating the trajectory of art history that had seen Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant conceive of Purism as a direct critique of Cubism in 1918. Purism, notably also championed by Fernand Léger, sought a more reductive type of painting that stripped objects back to their most elemental forms. Aiming to elevate the ubiquitous and utilitarian, the Purists embraced technology and an industrial aesthetic, aiming to infuse objects such as glasses and bottles with a timeless quality found in classical Greek architecture. This impulse towards fat, minimalist imagery would not only come to inform modern and postwar art at large, but would also be absorbed within the slick mass media images that fascinated Lichtenstein and his fellow Pop artists. While Lichtenstein throughout the 1970s explored such art historical movements as Futurism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism, it is this parallel that gives his discrete series of Purist Paintings a sharp conceptual edge that wholly sets it apart in Lichtenstein’s oeuvre. Yet while Lichtenstein embraced the still life motif as an occasion to explore formal concerns in a manner that paralleled the concerns of Purism, he pursued a more free-style approach by adapting and combining Purist
elements with his own Pop art idiom. Indeed, whereas he similarly builds the composition through fat planes of color, Lichtenstein crucially delineates the schematic forms with thick outlines reminiscent of Piet Mondrian’s crisp geometries, and disrupts the continuity of the image through areas of parallel lines. This striping, a characteristic feature of Lichtenstein’s work in the 1970s, notably developed out of the drawings that he created as the basis for paintings such as the present one. His exacting process saw him create typically one or two thumbnail studies that he would project onto the canvas to create an enlarged image. If Lichtenstein had previously used stripes in his drawings to indicate Ben-Day dots, he now applied slashes as a stylistic device in their own right – efectively setting the graphic precursor for the fattened sculptures he would begin creating in the late 1970s. Reviving the creed of Purism with a Pop art vision, Purist Painting with Dice beautifully demonstrates how Lichtenstein took the central tenets of Purism to new formal and conceptual pastures. Not only does it ofer an intriguing point of departure to refect upon the legacy of Purism in the contemporary age, it encapsulates the critical moment in Lichtenstein’s career when he pushed beyond his own achievements of the 1960s to reinvigorate both his own practice and the century old tradition of still life painting.
159. Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Brillo Soap Pads Box stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and initialed “VF” on the underside silkscreen ink and house paint on plywood 17 x 17 x 14 in. (43.2 x 43.2 x 35.6 cm.) Executed in 1964. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Christie’s, New York, May 4, 1989, lot 193 Private Collection (acquired at the above sale) Thence by descent to the present owner Literature Georg Frei and Neil Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures 19641969, vol. 2A, New York, 2004, p. 75, no. 702
Executed in 1964, the present work belongs to Andy Warhol’s iconic series of Brillo Soap Pad boxes, which came to defne the Pop art movement and re-defne traditional notions of sculpture. Afer being constructed by crafsmen to Warhol’s specifcations, the wooden boxes were frst hand-painted and then screenprinted, frst with red and then with blue ink. Taking a unique position in this series for its combination of two subtly varied shades of red, the present work encapsulates the a period of revolutionary transformation in Warhol’s oeuvre. The seeds for this icon of contemporary art were laid in early 1962 when Warhol produced a three-dimensional version of his Campbell Soup Cans paintings and over the next year and a half developing this initial idea further with his frst series of screenprinted plywood boxes screenprinted with imitation lettering and logos of such consumer staples as Campbell’s Tomato Soup, Kellogg’s Cornfakes, and Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Further developing the central tenets he had explored with his discrete Brillo (3 ¢ Of) boxes from 1963–1964, Warhol created his Brillo Soap Pad boxes between March and April 1964 in preparation for his second solo show at the Stable Gallery in New York. Massed foor to ceiling with Warhol’s various box sculptures, the Stable Gallery was transformed into what appeared to be a supermarket stockroom. The dazzling show became a rallying point for both those for and against Pop art; as Robert Indiana remembers, “The most striking opening of that period was defnitely Andy’s Brillo Box Show” (Robert Indiana, quoted in Victor Bockris, Warhol: The Biography, Cambridge, 2003, p. 198). These so-called “stable boxes” set the foundation for two further discrete iterations on the theme, created for Warhol’s 1968 exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and his 1970 retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art. In a cutting indictment of the values of bourgeois culture, Warhol’s Brillo Soap Pad constitutes a deadpan cultural critique of a materialistic and mass-produced society that remains unparalleled in the history of American art.
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection, New York
160. Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Piss numbered “PA 45.144” on the stretcher and “PA 45.155” on the overlap urine on linen 78 1/4 x 194 in. (198.8 x 492.8 cm.) Executed in 1977-1978. Estimate $500,000-700,000 Provenance The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Gagosian Gallery, Andy Warhol: Piss & Sex Paintings and Drawings, September 19 - November 2, 2002, p. 99 (illustrated, pp. 54-55) New York, Gagosian Gallery, Major Works, July 30 August 24, 2012 Literature Sally King-Nero and Neil Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings 1976-1978, vol. 5B, London, 2018, no. 3931, p. 145 (illustrated, p. 143)
“It’s a parody of Jackson Pollock,’ he told me, referring to rumours that Pollock would urinate on a canvas before delivering it to a dealer or client he didn’t like. Andy liked his work to have art-historical references, though if you brought it up, he would pretend he didn’t know what you were talking about…” Bob Colacello
129
457
Jackson Pollock, Number 7, 1950. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Digital image Museum of Modern Art, New York/Bridgeman Images Artwork © 2019 Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Sufused in luminous abstraction, Andy Warhol’s Piss, 1977-1978, brilliantly articulates how the artist’s conceptual investigation of painting in the fnal decade of his life mirrored his trailblazing experimentation in the early 1960s. A thin veil of gold staining spreads across the vast canvas, unfolding like the abstracted landscapes in Chinese ink painting in a manner that belies the subversive process of its creation. Radical, brazen and highly conceptual, Warhol’s Piss paintings occupy a singular position in Warhol’s oeuvre; entirely camera-less, they see an artist reinventing his practice and pushing it to its unprecedented abstract pastures. Within this series, comprising a total of 29 canvases, the present work takes a unique position as one of the three largest Piss paintings. Rare both for their size and dramatic panoramic format, these works notably remained hidden from the public in Warhol’s studio until afer his death. Executed in 1977-1978, the present work encapsulates the radical departure that Warhol embarked upon midcareer. Over a decade afer becoming a household name in the early 1960s, Warhol kept up a concerted efort to make sweeping changes in his work. Having returned to painting in 1972 in the form of his Celebrity Portraits and Mao series, Warhol longed for a stimulation of new ideas and seemed intent to launch a radical metamorphosis
of his practice: “Between 1976 and 1978, he not only recaptured the radical trajectory of his 1960s work, he set his paintings on a distinctly diferent course” (Sally King-Nero and Neil Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings 1976-1978, vol. 5B, London, 2018, p. 15). Shifing away from the dominant visual matrix of portraiture that had defned the early 1970s, starting in late 1975, Warhol began phasing into two new bodies of work based on the art historical tradition of the still-life, his Skull and Hammer and Sickle series. A year later, in late 1976, he started his radical Torso and Sex Parts series, and in the summer of 1977 set in motion his perhaps most radical body of work in that period: his camera-less, non-representational Piss, Oxidation, and Cum paintings. For the frst time since 1961, Warhol had suddenly dispensed with the photograph. With his Piss paintings, Warhol was efectively revisiting an idea that he had begun circa 1961, though only one example is known to have survived. The present work is one of the paintings Warhol created in mid-1977 in a direct continuation of his frst Piss paintings, consisting of urine on primed canvas. While the majority of Piss paintings were produced on pre-stretched canvases, this work is one of only eight giant canvases that were produced unstretched, with the canvases unrolled on the
foor of his painting space, and later cut and stretched. Avoiding painterly gesture and personal touch, Warhol created these works by moving around the canvas in such a way that, as his assistant Ronnie Cutrone recalled, “it became almost a sort of performance. Like an Yves Klein kind of thing; with women rolling on the canvas. We would instead bring in boys and girls and have them standing on the big canvases. So the studio would become like a toilet, a giant urinal” (Ronnie Cutrone, quoted in Andy Warhol: The Late Work, Munich, 2004 p. 92). Though Warhol’s Piss paintings never lef the studio during Warhol’s lifetime, he did exhibit his Oxidation paintings. His observation regarding the exhibition of these works in public for the frst time in 1978, ofers intriguing and unexpected connections between the aesthetic of this body of work and his Byzantine Catholic upbringing: “They looked like real drippy paintings… you can understand why those holy pictures cry all the time” (Andy Warhol, 1985, quoted in Annette Michelson, ed., Andy Warhol (October Files), Cambridge, 2001, p. 125) Evocative of the gold-leaf backgrounds of icon paintings, these works speak to Warhol’s interest in the precious, sacral quality of metallic surfaces. Elevating the rudimentary to the sacral realm of high art, Warhol ofers an ingenious rif on art history.
Indeed, the creation of these works was of course not dissimilar to Jackson Pollock’s famous mode of action painting. Warhol, who had pioneered his Pop art practice in direct opposition to his Abstract Expressionist forebears, here ofers a iconic comment on Pollock’s allover gesture. This connection becomes particularly apparent in the three largest Piss paintings, including the present one, whose horizontality and size echo those of such paintings as Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950, or Blue Poles (Number 11), 1952, which at 83 by 191 inches possess near identical dimensions as the present lot. As Rosalind Krauss observed, speaking of how Warhol decoded the liquid gesture of Pollock’s drip technique, these paintings “were simply once again motifs that connected high and low culture – action painting and the world of the baths and their golden showers…” (Rosalind Krauss, The Optical Unconscious, Cambridge, 1993, p. 276). In many ways, Warhol was here pushing Marcel Duchamp’s urinal ready-made sculpture Fountain, 1917, to the extreme. Just as Duchamp questioned the limits and defnitions of art, Warhol, too, tested the boundaries of painting with a similar spirit of parody, allusion and wit. Demonstrating a deep conceptual investigation of notions of process and time, Warhol’s Piss painting stands as one of the purest and most radical articulations of abstraction within the Pop master’s oeuvre.
Yves Klein, Untitled color fre painting FC 1, 1961. Private Collection. Photo credit Banque d’Images, ADAGP/Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Property from a Distinguished New York Collection
161. John Chamberlain
1927-2011
Incidentallyneutered painted and chromed-plated steel 61 x 103 x 37 in. (154.9 x 261.6 x 94 cm.) Executed in 2008. Estimate $200,000-300,000 Provenance Pace Gallery, New York (acquired directly from the artist) Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, PaceWildenstein, John Chamberlain, Recent Work, February 14 - March 15, 2008 New York, PaceWildenstein, A Walk in the Park: Outdoor Sculpture at PaceWildenstein, June 19 July 24, 2009 Beijing, The Pace Gallery, Beijing Voice: Leaving Realism Behind, November 19, 2011 - February 12, 2012 Zuoz, Pace at Chesa BŸsin, Carte Blanche, February 20 - March 30, 2014 Literature Daniel Kunitz, “John Chamberlain’s Heavy Metal”, The New York Sun, February 21, 2008, online Phyllis Tuchman, “Reviews Ð John Chamberlain”, Art in America, November 2008, p. 19 (illustrated)
“I’m more interested in seeing what the material tells me than in imposing my will on it.” John Chamberlain
Property from a Distinguished New York Collection
162. Dan Flavin
1933-1996
untitled (to Bob and Pat Rohm) red, green and yellow fuorescent light 96 x 96 x 9 in. (243.8 x 243.8 x 22.9 cm.) Executed in 1969, this work is number 1 from an edition of 5, of which only 4 were fabricated, and is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity signed by the artist. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Christie’s, New York, May 8, 1990, lot 333 Private Collection Christie’s, New York, May 14, 2002, lot 18 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Literature “Flavin Work on Display”, Rambler, August 25, 1969, p. 4 Jean-Louis Bourgeois, “New York: Dan Flavin, Dwan, Castelli, Jewish Museum”, Artforum, no. 8, April 1970, p. 81 (installation view of another example illustrated) Christel Sauer, Die Sammlung FER/The FER Colllection, Cologne, 1983, p. 183 (another example illustrated, on the inside cover and p. 85 ) Götz Adriani, Museum für neue Kunst: ZKM Karlsruhe, Munich, 2002, p. 30 (installation view of another example illustrated, p. 12) Michael Govan and Tifany Bell, Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights 1961-1996, New York, 2004, no. 228, p. 285 (another example illustrated) Benjamin Genocchio, “Sculptures Chiseled With Light”, The New York Times, July 1, 2007, online (illustrated) Jane Alison, ed., Colour afer Klein, Re-thinking Colour in Modern and Contemporary Art, London, 2005, p. 91 (another example illustrated)
Few artists have defned a particular medium as Dan Flavin, whose pioneering work from the early 1960s to his death in 1996 almost entirely consisted of light in the form of commercially available fuorescent tubes. Executed in 1969 in an edition of fve, of which only four were fabricated, untitled (to Bob and Pat Rohm) was created six years afer Flavin achieved his artistic breakthrough of employing this industrial readymade to create installations of light and color, or “situations” as he preferred to call them. The present work was dedicated to the Bob Rohm, an artist,
and his wife Pat Rohm, both of whom were friends of Flavin’s. The composition held such signifcance to Flavin that he would create another smaller version of it between 1969 and 1970, another example of which resides in the collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. It is testimony to the signifcance of untitled (to Bob and Pat Rohm) that Flavin gifed another example of this edition to his close friend and fellow trailblazing artist Donald Judd. Drawing the viewer in with its sufused fuorescent glow that shimmers in red, green and yellow, the present work epitomizes Flavin’s pioneering phenomenological investigation of color and light that would forever alter the course of art-making. Striving to strip art from its reliance on illusionism, allegory, and narrative, and reduce it to its most essential form, Flavin, in 1960, conceived of the groundbreaking idea to construct sculptures by incorporating electric light. Within the course of just three years, he gave form to this idea by initially juxtaposing light onto monochromatic canvas and then radically removing the canvas altogether with his seminal May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi). Despite Flavin’s deep awareness of the historical and religious symbolism of light in art and his ofen personal dedication of his untitled works, he resolutely refused to attach any symbolic or narrative signifcance to his work. In this he was importantly joined by Donald Judd, together with whom Flavin became known as one of the progenitors of “Minimal Art”, the term coined by Richard Wollheim in 1965 to describe this new tendency, though Flavin and his colleagues opposed this label. untitled (to Bob and Pat Rohm) epitomizes Flavin’s favored construction for what he called the “near squares placed across a corner” (Dan Flavin, quoted in Michael Govan and Tifany Bell, Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights 1961-1996, New York, 2004, p. 255). It has two yellow and green vertical 8-foot lamps on each side that face into the corner, and two horizontal red 8-foot lamps facing out. In doing so, Flavin has efectively created a frame like structure with a sly nod to the discourse regarding the pictorial space inside a frame and the real space of minimalist sculpture.
Actual size
163. Fred Sandback
1943-2003
Untitled signed and dated “Sandback ’97” on the reverse acrylic house paint on panel 5 3/4 x 4 3/8 x 3/4 in. (14.7 x 11 x 1.9 cm.) Executed in 1997. Estimate $15,000-20,000 Provenance Lawrence Markey Gallery, San Antonio Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from a Distinguished New York Collection
164. Craig Kaufman
b. 1932
#1-8 signed, titled and dated “#1-8 RC Kaufman 94-95� on the reverse Plexiglas and lacquer 31 1/4 x 21 1/4 x 4 7/8 in. (79.4 x 54 x 12.3 cm.) Executed in 1994-1995. Estimate $70,000-90,000 Provenance Private Collection, California Private Collection, Los Angeles Pace Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
165. Carlos Cruz-Diez
b. 1923
Chromointerférence Mécanique signed with the artist’s initials, titled, inscribed and dated “C.D. ‘CHROMOINTERFERENCE’ CRUZ-DIEZ PARIS 1970” on the reverse silkscreen on paper and plastic, motor and wood 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 in. (60 x 60 cm.) Executed in 1970. This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation. Estimate $180,000-220,000 Provenance Collection of Rudy and Jane Ayoroa, Washington D.C. (acquired directly from the artist) Collection of Ira D. Glick and Juannie G. Eng, San Francisco (acquired from the above in 1992) Exhibited Venice, Venezuelan Pavilion, XXXV Biennale Internazionale D’arte di Venezia, June 24 October 25, 1970 Sarasota, John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art; Miami Metropolitan Museum and Art Center; Pensacola Art Center, Latin American Horizons: 1976, April 8 - November 30, 1976 London, Phillips, Carlos Cruz-Diez: Luminous Reality, July 16 - September 6, 2018 Literature Simón Marchán Fiz, “La 35 Bienal Internacional De Arte De Venecia”, Goya Revista de Arte, 1970, no. 98, p. 112 (illustrated) Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea, eds., Color in space and time, Cruz-Diez, Houston, 2011, pp. 218, 219 (illustrated)
Debuted at the Venice Biennale in 1970, Carlos Cruz-Diez’s Chromointerférence Mécanique perfectly synthesizes the artist’s exploration of color that has put him at the forefront of contemporary art discourse for the past six decades. Its title distills the core elements of Cruz-Diez’s practice: Chromointerférence expresses his understanding of color as an ephemeral phenomenon produced by light and movement, independent of representation or even form, while Mécanique underpins the kinetic component of his work that places him alongside such pioneering artists as Jesús Rafael Soto. In the present work, a circular piece of Plexiglas printed with a pattern of lines rotates above the multi-colored background of his so-called Couleur additive modules. What was lef to the movement of the observer in his famous Physiochromies, is here established objectively by automated movement. New colors emerge from the apparent blending of pre-existing ones. It was in 1959 during a brief visit to Venezuela that CruzDiez had an epiphany, prompting a series that in 1966 culminated in his Chromointerférence works. Exploring how the interference of patterned line with identical or varied frequencies generate a range of colors, a year later he pushed the central tenets of this series even further through the inclusion of a motor. It was with works such as Chromointerférence Mécanique that Cruz-Diez cemented his international recognition when he exhibited at the Venezuelan Pavilion in the 35th Venice Biennale in 1970. The present work was one of twelve mechanical Chromointerférences included, each producing varying and astonishing patterns of movement.
Installation view of the present work at the exhibition Carlos Cruz-Diez, XXXV Biennale di Venezia, Venezuelan Pavilion, Venice, Italy 1970. Image copyright © Atelier Cruz-Diez, Paris. © 2019 Carlos Cruz-Diez/Artist’s Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP, Paris
Property of an Important Private Collector, Europe
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166. Kenneth Noland
1924-2010
Greenbriar signed, titled and dated “GREENBRIAR Kenneth Noland 1966” on the reverse acrylic on canvas 94 1/2 x 23 5/8 in. (240 x 60 cm.) Painted in 1966. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Helander Gallery, Palm Beach Private Collection Phillips, New York, May 15, 2015, lot 180 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Palm Beach, Helander Gallery, Kenneth Noland: An Important Exhibition of Paintings from 1959 to 1989, February 7 - March 3, 1990
A striking example of Kenneth Noland’s celebrated Diamond series, Greenbriar stands among the artist’s earliest works on shaped canvas – a technique he innovated – which cemented him as one of the most important purveyors of American abstraction. Painted in 1966, Greenbriar manifests itself with an all-encompassing presence of pure form and sublime color. The result of Noland’s highly controlled and premeditated staining method, whereby any modifcation or revision is nearly impossible due to his application of thinned paint onto raw canvas, here the picture plane is transformed into a dynamic color feld. The present work is a beautiful example of Noland’s so-called needle diamonds of the mid to late 1960s, setting the foundation for his acclaimed asymmetrical shaped canvases of the 1970s and 1980s. While working in the lineage of artistic forebears such as Piet Mondrian and Ilya Bolotowsky, Noland’s teachers at Black Mountain College, these diamond canvases represent a major innovation in the history of modern art. As art historian Kenworth Mofett noted in 1979 in reference to this series, “Noland thinks more abstractly” than Mondrian, “and, characteristically, he interlocks the outside and the inside. The diamond is used to accommodate not lines but colored bands in chevron formation…At once open and delimited, they have no unambiguous, behind-the-frame feeling; they seem to be simultaneously a cutout from a series of larger chevrons marching of in one direction and a completely self-sufcient picture object” (Kenworth Mofett, Kenneth Noland, New York, 1979, p. 56). While demonstrating Noland’s undisputed abilities as a colorist, Untitled thus epitomizes a major milestone in the artist’s career-long pursuit of achieving a harmonious union between support image.
“Noland’s search for the ideal Platonic form has crystallized into an art in which color and form are held in perfect equilibrium… The rational and the felt, distilled form and sensuous color intermesh to create a magic presence. His color is space. Color is all.” Diane Waldman
Property from the Private Collection of William Harris Smith, Chicago
167. Kenneth Noland
1924-2010
Mysteries: To Blue signed, titled, inscribed and dated “MYSTERIES: TO BLUE 1999 Kenneth Noland 990032” on the reverse acrylic on canvas 34 x 34 in. (86.5 x 86.5 cm.) Painted in 1999. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance Ameringer Howard, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from the Private Collection of William Harris Smith, Chicago
168. Bernar Venet
b. 1941
Two Indeterminate Lines rolled steel 58 7/8 x 67 x 50 1/2 in. (149.5 x 170.2 x 128.3 cm.) Executed in 2006, this work is included in the artist’s archives under inventory number bv06s1. This work is eligible for a certifcate of authenticity signed by the artist. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm Private Collection Acquired from the above by the present owner
Two Indeterminate Lines, 2006, is an elegant example of Bernar Venet’s conceptual sculptural practice that is defned by his longstanding preoccupation with the scientifc and mathematical realms. The arced sculpture presents a myriad of steel lines coagulating in the form of a whirlwind which bewilders the viewer, challenging conventional geometric logic. Created just two years afer Venet was bestowed France’s highest award, the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, Two Indeterminate Lines captures the crux of the artist’s thematic explorations and is situated at the apex of his mature chapter. Venet has been exploring the properties and mechanisms of equilibrium through the creation of mesmerizing sculptures that are straight, curved, broken, tilted, or oblique. Though Venet’s oeuvre spans a variety of media – including drawing, photography, and set design – his most signifcant artistic gestures have been materialized in steel, for which he has become renowned and acclaimed worldwide. Though Venet was deeply infuenced by the work of French forebearers such as Henri Matisse and Paul Cézanne while growing up in France, he developed a conceptual practice following his move to New York in the 1960s. Initially in
drawing and painting, he veered towards sculpture – befriending such artists as Carl Andre, Robert Morris, and Donald Judd, and rising to prominence as one the leading artists in the then emerging conceptual and minimalist movements. His signature Indeterminate Lines series, which he began in 1979, was inspired by mathematical investigations surrounding notions of chance, order, and balance. Typically curvilinear and monumental in size, the artist’s sculptures from this period have transformed arresting outdoor spaces, such as the Gardens of Versailles, Paris, Regent’s Park, London, and the Palais du Pharo Park, Marseille. Two Indeterminate Lines is an exceptional example of Venet’s focused yet enigmatic practice; it urges the viewer to follow its inherently divergent material course, in search of a beginning and an end. Yet, this proves to be an almost impossible endeavor: the industrial lines composing the sculpture weave a complex and cohesive composition that eschews any possibility of individual discernment. Through such masterful rendering, Two Indeterminate Lines materializes Venet’s career-long resolve to transpose mathematical concepts and scientifc theories into the realm of art.
Property from the Private Collection of William Harris Smith, Chicago
169. Richard Serra
b. 1938
Track 31 paintstick on handmade paper 40 x 40 in. (101.6 x 101.6 cm.) Executed in 2007. Estimate $300,000-400,000 Provenance Gagosian Gallery, New York John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco Acquired from the above by the present owner
Executed in 2007, Track 31 exemplifes the minimal yet richly surfaced monochromatic drawings which have come to defne Richard Serra’s iconoclastic oeuvre. Although the artist is best known for his large-scale metal sculptural works, Serra’s drawings constitute an essential component of his practice, expressing the mass and volume of space in literal form through the visual record of the black paintstick. With graphic intensity, Track 31 refects the artist’s dynamic understanding of spatial perception and afrms its physical relationship with the world. Serra has worked with paintstick since the early 1970s, when he began to create his monumental series of Installation Drawings in an investigation of process and site-specifcity. Since this period, his drawings have evolved through several diferent phases before developing into the Solids series, to which Track 31 belongs. Track 31’s dense, grainy surface is the result of a long and extremely physical process of working the surface, in which Serra frst spreads a sheet of handmade paper on top of a heated block of paintstick before pressing it into the paper using a steel block and the weight of his own body. As Neil Cox describes, chance is paramount to each drawing: “The process depends on achieving even pressure across the surface, sensing the marking, through the movement of the hand, through embodied memory and visual tracking over the blank white sheet… Once the process is felt to have reached its end—then and only then is the paper lifed from its bed of black matter” (Neil Cox, “The Shape of Feeling, in Richard Serra: Drawings 2015-2017, exh. cat., Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2017, pp. 12-13). Allowing his method of work to defne intention, Serra’s drawings mirror the formation of volume that becomes physically realized in his acclaimed sculptures. Bristling with textural palpability, Track 31 mediates the spectator’s perception of its surroundings by redefning and articulating space and time.
Property from the Private Collection of William Harris Smith, Chicago
170. Richard Serra
b. 1938
Lef Corner Square to the Floor paintstick on linen 80 1/2 x 80 1/2 in. (204.5 x 204.5 cm.) Executed in 1979. Estimate $80,000-120,000
Provenance Richard Hines Gallery, Seattle Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Galerie Ronny van de Velde, Antwerp Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York Sotheby’s, New York, November 18, 1992, lot 239B Private Collection, Europe Sotheby’s, New York, November 14, 2012, lot 283 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Literature Over de grens: James Lee Byars, Luciano Fabro, Cornelius Rogge, Richard Serra, Ulay/Marina Abramović, Henk Visch, exh. cat., Textielmuseum Tilburg, 1989, n.p. (illustrated) Hans Janssen, ed., Richard Serra: Drawings Zeichnungen 1969-1990, Bern, 1989, no. 139, p. 225 (illustrated)
171. Robert Ryman
1930-2019
CORE XXI signed with the artist’s initials, inscribed and dated “R59 R95” lower center; further signed with the artist’s initials, inscribed and dated “R95 R59” upper center encaustic painting with graphite and wax crayon on Lana paper, wood frame and Denglas 19 1/4 x 19 1/4 in. (48.9 x 48.9 cm) Executed in 1995. This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being organized by David Gray under number 95.021. Estimate $70,000-90,000
Provenance PaceWildenstein, New York Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 2006) Zwirner & Wirth, New York Collection of Peder Bonier, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2011
Exhibited Nashville, Cheekwood Museum of Art, Temporary Contemporary: Recent Paintings by Robert Ryman, May 31 - July 28, 1996 Seoul, Kukje Gallery, Robert Ryman, December 13, 1996 - January 20, 1997 New York, Andrea Rosen Gallery, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Robert Ryman, June 19 - August 21, 2009 New York, Vivian Horan, Just Minimalist, May 5 June 17, 2011
172. Sol LeWitt
1928-2007
Black Cubes enamel on fberglass each 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in. (100 x 100 x 100 cm.) overall 78 3/4 x 78 3/4 x 39 3/8 in. (200 x 200 x 100 cm.) Executed in 2000, this work is accompanied by a photo-certifcate of authenticity signed by the artist. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance Konrad Fischer Galerie, Dusseldorf Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above) Private Collection, Boston (acquired from the above) Exhibited Dusseldorf, Konrad Fischer Galerie, Sol LeWitt, May 13 - June 24, 2000 Dusseldorf, Konrad Fischer Galerie, Sol LeWitt, November 8 - February 7, 2004 MÜnchengladbach, Museum Abteiberg, Strange I’ve Seen that Face Before: Kunst, Gestalt, Phantom, May 7-September 17, 2006, p. 98 (illustrated, p. 26)
“In order to achieve abstraction, I felt that I had to develop a language that was totally independent from the elements of fgurative art… it was necessary to fnd my own language, not borrowed from one. I began with the repetition of a simple element, the square, so that I achieved another reality through the process of repetition.” Jesús Rafael Soto
173. Jesús Rafael Soto
1923-2005
Naranja Superior signed, titled and dated “Naranja Superior Soto 2003” on the reverse acrylic on wood and metal 32 1/4 x 32 3/8 x 5 1/2 in. (82 x 82.2 x 14 cm.) Executed in 2003. Estimate $200,000-300,000 Provenance Private Collection, Miami (acquired directly from the artist)
174. Loló Soldevilla
1901-1971
Untitled signed “LOLÓ” on the reverse casein on wood 19 1/2 x 33 1/2 x 2 in. (49.5 x 85.1 x 5.1 cm.) Executed circa 1955, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity signed by Pedro de Oraá. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Private Collection, Havana Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from the Private Collection of William Harris Smith, Chicago
175. Dadamaino
1930-2004
Volume signed, titled and dated “DADAMAINO VOLUME 1958� on the stretcher tempera on canvas 39 1/4 x 19 3/4 in. (99.8 x 50.1 cm.) Executed in 1958. This work is registered in the Archivio Dadamaino, Milan, under no. 017/14. Estimate $30,000-50,000 Provenance De Primi Fine Art, Lugano The Mayor Gallery, London Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
176. Manolo Valdés
b. 1942
Rostro sobre fondo turquesa signed and inscribed “M VALDES NY” on the reverse oil and burlap collage on canvas 52 1/4 x 60 in. (132.8 x 152.5 cm.) Executed in 2002. Estimate $180,000-250,000 Provenance Galería Freites, Caracas Acquired from the above by the present owner
Rostro sobre fondo turquesa is an iconic example of Manolo Valdés’ vibrant paintings on burlap. Executed in 2002, the present work displays the full maturity of a vigorous group of works which the artist developed in the early 1980s that are centered around the appropriation and reinterpretation of art history. Channeling the portraits of Henri Matisse, Valdés’ fgure is constructed from layers of stitched burlap rendered in rich color, lending the composition a vibrant energy. Indeed, Valdés’ daring choices of materials is pivotal to his practice, as they breathe new life into the appropriated imagery by liberating them from their original support. Inspired by Rauschenberg’s Canyon from 1959, Valdes began questioning the hierarchy in artistic materials – experimenting with unconventional materials to disrupt the century-old tradition of fgurative painting. In Rostro sobre fondo turquesa, the coarse fabric plays an essential role in creating a rich texture on an otherwise fat composition. The disjointed remnants are stitched together, with the edges of roughly cut fabric erupting at the seams and adding depth to the fgure’s cheeks and nose. This stitching also brings the creative process to the forefront, with the collage method serving as a metaphor for his practice, wherein the new is created by piecing together and transforming the old.
177. Fernando Botero
b. 1932
Portrait of Nadine Haim signed and dated “Botero 77” lower right; further signed, titled and dated “NADINE HAIM BOTERO 77” on the reverse oil and printed paper collage on canvas mounted on board 34 7/8 x 32 5/8 in. (88.5 x 83 cm.) Painted in 1977. Estimate $120,000-180,000 Provenance Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner Literature Carole Hobi, ed., Fernando Botero, Monograph & Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings 1975 - 1990, Lausanne, 2000, no. 20, p. 253 (illustrated) Santiago Londoño Vélez, Botero: La Invención de una Estética, Bogotá, 2003, p. 537
“I don’t paint green or blue faces, as Chagall or Picasso did. I don’t see that as being my mode of expression, because I retain a respect for reality and I want to believe that what I paint is always within the realm of the possible. My art touches reality, creates a parallel reality, a possible reality.” Fernando Botero
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
178. Fernando Botero
b. 1932
El Rapto de Europa incised with the artist’s signature and number “Botero E/A 1/2” on the base bronze with brown patina 23 5/8 x 17 3/4 x 7 7/8 in. (60 x 45 x 20 cm.) Executed in 2002, this work is artist’s proof number 1 of 2. Estimate $300,000-400,000 Provenance Private Collection, Miami Christie’s, New York, November 19, 2007, lot 70 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Executed in 2002, El Rapto de Europa is an imposing example of Fernando Botero’s sensual, distinctly contemporary subversions of Italian Renaissance mythological paintings. Compact yet sensitively wrought in a rich brown patina, El Rapto de Europa presents Europa as a liberated and robustly hedonistic woman in perfect harmony with the bull she rides. El Rapto de Europa references the Cretan myth of the abduction of the Phoenician princess Europa by Zeus, king of the gods. Captivated by Europa’s beauty, Zeus transformed himself into a white bull and joined her father’s herds, enticing Europa to climb on his back. Zeus galloped into the sea, where he swam to the nearby island of Crete and made her its queen. El Rapto de Europa is a smaller iteration of the celebrated series of monumental works from the early 1990s that explored this ancient Greek myth and which have been prominently exhibited across the world, such as at the Plaza de Bellas Artes in Mexico City in 2012, the Madrid Barajas airport and the Botero Plaza in Medellin. The rape of Europa was a favorite subject of Renaissance artists such as Titian, Veronese and Guido Reni, who depicted Europa, enrobed in hazy white gowns, atop the white bull. In Reni’s depiction, Europa gazes upwards passively at a mystical cherub foating in the sky, while Titian’s Europa claws at the air in clear distress while her handmaidens call to her from the shore. In contrast, Botero’s Europa sits astride the bull with confdence and poise, one hand resting on the bull’s powerful neck and head tilted back, perhaps to watch the coasts of her homeland recede beyond the horizon. She is nude,
and the curves of her body mirror the shape of the bull’s muscular fanks. The art historian and artist John Sillevis writes, “As in all the techniques that Botero applies, he craves perfection, so the bronzes display a splendid surface in which all the riches of the modeling can be enjoyed by the play of light and shadow. The fgures of mythology that we know from his paintings now come to us as larger than life divinities that can easily dominate a square or a rotunda in any city of the world. His reclining nudes, smoking or eating a forbidden fruit, with their undulating shapes, produce a most sensual and seductive efect” (John Sillevis, The Baroque World of Fernando Botero, New Haven, 2006, p. 31). Inevitably, the infuence of Titian and Veronese evoke comparisons between Botero’s art and the famously voluptuous, monumental fgures featured in their lustrous masterpieces. Botero’s formal preoccupations build upon these earlier infuences, transforming a typically Ciquecento emphasis on physical roundness, sensuality and mass into his own trademark style. In a 1981 interview Botero clarifed this link, stating, “To me… the threedimensional or volumetric plasticity of form is very important. In the frst watercolors I painted as a boy, this trend was already very clear-cut. So the artists I preferred were those especially interested in volumes: Giotto, Masaccio, Piero della Francesca, Ingres, etc. By studying those artists I gradually clarifed what space and volume meant to me” (Fernando Botero, quoted in Edward J. Sullivan, Botero: Sculpture, New York, 1984, p. 13).
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
179. Fernando Botero
b. 1932
Horse incised with the artist’s signature and number “Botero A.P. 1/2”; further stamped by the foundry “Fonderia del Chiaro Pietrasanta Italy” on the reverse painted bronze 61 x 43 x 27 in. (154.9 x 109.2 x 68.6 cm.) Executed in 1992, this work is artist’s proof number 1 of 2 and is accompanied by a photo certifcate signed by the artist. Estimate $600,000-800,000 Provenance Marlborough Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Paris, Grand Palais, Botero aux Champs-Élysées: sculptures et oeuvres sur papiers, October 22, 1992 – January 30, 1993, p. 151 (another variant exhibited and illustrated) Madrid, Paseo de Recoletos, Fernando Botero en Madrid, May 12 – August 12, 1994, pp. 13, 47 (another variant exhibited and illustrated, p. 46) The Yomiuri Shimbun, Fernando Botero, 1994, p. 127 (another variant exhibited and illustrated, p. 126) Washington, D.C., Art Museum of the Americas, Monumental Sculptures, Botero in Washington at President’s Park, September 24 - November 1, 1996, p. 57 (another variant exhibited and illustrated, p. 60) Literature Jean-Clarence Lambert, Botero Sculptures, Bogotá, 1998, no. 207, n.p. (another variant illustrated)
“Sculptures permit me to create real volume... One can touch the forms, one can give them smoothness, the sensuality that one wants.” Fernando Botero
A masterful example of Fernando Botero’s sculptural practice, Horse, 1992, epitomizes the dramatism of voluminous shape and sensuality that has come to defne the artist’s celebrated visual idiom. Taking a prime position as one of Botero’s most iconic motifs, Horse ennobles the equine form with a quiet magnanimity evocative of the anthropomorphic tradition aligning horses with strength, majesty and empire. This monumental sculpture exemplifes the signifcance of sculpture in Botero’s pursuit of exploring volume and the sensuality of form. Though he had already begun experimenting in sculpture in the 1960s, it was only in the 1970s that he began to pursue it in in depth. Fusing his own unmistakable style with the craf of sculpting he learned while travelling to Europe, Botero set up a studio in Pietrasanta, close to the marble mountains of Carrara famous for its rich tradition and history of sculpture that, in 2012, presented another example of Horse in its town square. Pietrasanta is home to the world’s fnest bronze foundries, patronized by artists such as Jef Koons, Joan Miró and Henry Moore, underscoring Botero’s commitment to the classical sculpture tradition in the creation of his immaculate bronze casts.
With its swollen limbs and surrealistically monumental scale, Horse appears to specifcally pay homage to The Battle of San Romano by the Renaissance artist Paolo Uccello to elegize the Florentine victory over Sienna. “Certainly his relish of (perspective) is sensual and formal: a carnival of exteriors, of spherical horses’ bottoms and tubular armored limbs, with little hint of the interior world,” Jonathan Jones wrote on the subject of the painting, yet the observation is equally apt in regard to Horse (Jonathan Jones, “The Violence of Spring: Paolo Uccello’s The Battle of San Romano”, The Guardian, April 10, 2012, online). Evoking the enormous, three-dimensional horses crowding the foreground in the battle scene in a hallucinatory exaggeration of perspective, Botero celebrates the animal through colossal, nearly comedic proportions. Uccello interpreted form as sculptural, even geometric, and his horses possess a physical immediacy shared by Botero’s sculpture as light refects of the gleaming curves of its hermetically sealed bronze cast.
Paolo Uccello, The Battle of San Romano, circa 1438-1440. National Gallery, London, UK/ Bridgeman Images
Alternate view of present lot
Horse is characteristic of Botero’s ability to meld diverse varieties of style into his own baroque, satirical aesthetic universe, including the heavy, solemn animals found in early Egyptian art and the anthropomorphic stone sculptures of ancient American cultures. The polished bronze cast and mesmerizing rotundity of Horse elicit comparisons to Henry Moore’s enigmatic bronze sculptures of animals and nude women, which were cast at the same foundries in Pietrasanta. Like Moore, Botero’s sculptures, as Mariana Hanstein noted, “emanate something of the cultic. The colossal female nudes are reminiscent of prehistoric fertility idols, his monumental animals of sphinxes or of the fgures guarding the entrances to the temples of the ancient world” (Mariana Hanstein, Fernando Botero, Cologne, 2003, p. 89)
While invoking the mythical sublime, Botero’s Horse is sculpted with an afectionate reverence for its status as man’s timeless companion and friend. As the critic Edward Sullivan put in a nutshell, “Botero’s use of the fgure of the horse is something akin to Cervantes’ use of the nag Rocinante in Don Quixote. Downtrodden and worn out, the horse is the constant companion of man in his journeys and travails. In reading Cervantes’ great novel, we increasingly feel the author’s afection for the horse. Botero’s equally afectionate evocations of all his various animals remind us that he thinks of these creatures as integral to his own personal universe” (Edward J. Sullivan, Botero Sculpture, New York, 1986, pp. 135-137). In Botero’s focus on the horse motif, we can trace a larger preoccupation with the Spanish literary and cultural tradition in the artist’s body of work, refected in his depiction of intrinsically Spanish pastimes and fgures ranging from bull fghts to conquistadores. These themes are deeply related to his sumptuous formalism, which pays homage to the tradition of baroque Old Master painting rather than modernist innovations – in his sensual volume, a conscious communion with the baroque naturalism of Diego Velázquez and the romanticism of Francisco de Goya becomes apparent. In Horse, Botero celebrates the iconography of the storied Spanish tradition as translated through his signature Boterismo.
Another variant of Fernando Botero’s Horse on display in the central square of Pietrasanta in Tuscany, Italy. Image Paul Sampson/Travel/Alamy Stock Photo, Artwork © Fernando Botero
“The human body really is my favorite subject because it reveals a poetry that is very hard to fnd in a still life.” Fernando Botero
180. Fernando Botero
b. 1932
Mother and Child signed and dated “Botero 03” lower right oil on canvas 43 1/4 x 36 in. (109.9 x 91.4 cm.) Painted in 2003. Estimate $350,000-500,000 Provenance Robinson Art Gallery, Knokke Private Collection, Amsterdam (acquired from the above) Koller Auktionen AG, Zurich, June 27, 2015, lot 3461 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
181. Piero Pizzi Cannella
b. 1955
Nero, Ferro, Battuto; Sottile, Ferro, Battuto (Diptych) signed, titled and dated “‘NERO, SOTTILE, FERRO BATTUTO’ 1988 PIZZI CANNELLA” on the reverse of the lef part; signed, titled and dated “‘SOTTILE, FERRO BATTUTO’ 1988 PIZZI CANNELLA” on the reverse of the right part oil on canvas, diptych each 67 1/4 x 37 1/2 in. (170.8 x 95.3 cm.) overall 67 1/4 x 75 in. (170.8 x 190.6 cm.) Painted in 1988. Estimate $30,000-40,000
Provenance Runkel-Hue-Williams Ltd., London Edward Tyler Nahem, New York Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above) Exhibited Staten Island, Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, LoSpirito: New Art from Italy, October 18, 1992 January 19, 1993
182. Lucio Fontana
1899-1968
Untitled incised with the artist’s signature and dated “Lucio Fontana 56” lower lef glazed terracotta diameter 20 1/8 in. (51 cm.) Executed in 1956, this work is registered with the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan under the archive number 2178/28. Estimate $80,000-100,000
Provenance Art Point Contemporary Gallery, Tokyo Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1991 Exhibited Tokyo, Art Point Contemporary Gallery, Lucio Fontana, January – February 1991, no. 19, n.p. (illustrated)
183. Mario Merz
1925-2003
Una lunghissima domenica iron support, wire mesh and neon 79 1/4 x 198 1/8 x 12 1/4 in. (201.4 x 503.2 x 31 cm.) Executed in 1988.
“The word is theatrical; it is not as abstract as a number… The word is much more concrete.” Mario Merz
This work is registered with the Archivio Mario Merz under number 2244/1988/NN. Estimate $180,000-200,000 Provenance Jean Bernier Gallery, Athens Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1988
The mesmerizing, repetitious curves of Una lunghissima domenica, 1988, features Mario Merz’s use of unconventional materials employed in his conceptual investigations of sculpture. As a leading fgure of the Arte Povera movement in the late 1960s, Merz sought to experiment with an expansive and unconventional variety of materials for his installations that challenged traditional artistic media and questioned the role of art in society. As such, Una lunghissima domenica is a striking example of the artist’s exploration ofmateriality and the relationship between art and human nature. Placed on an iron support and sprawling across the wire mesh, the phrase “Una lunghissima domenica” – which translates in English to “a very long Sunday” – transcribed in Merz’s signature blue neon, expresses an intriguing linguistic dynamism. Through this presentation of an indeterminate and subjective statement, the artist explores the signifcance of language in the human experience. Indeed, as Merz put forward, “The use of words is another way of being human…these words give [him] a sense of reality; they represent an acceptance of our presence”
(Mario Merz, quoted in Mario Merz, Turin, 2003, p. 76). As words tend to have a theatrical context associated with personal recollections, the present work fosters the pondering of individual existence and self-refection; Una lunghissima domenica embraces everyday life by summoning ruminations of pleasurable weekend languor and nostalgic recreation. Utilizing visual stimulation to guide the cognitive process, Merz adroitly juxtaposes disparate materials in Una lunghissima domenica: the structured wire mesh and iron supports serve as a contrastingly rigid backdrop for the delicate cursive bands of sof neon displayed in the artist’s handwriting. In this way, the energy of light is contained while remaining impactful and inescapable. The contradiction of these materials emphasizes the artist’s embrace of life’s imbalance and its importance in everyday experience. Favoring the refection of individual journeys and fnding interest in the subjectivity of experience, Una lunghissima domenica inserts itself into the human context and prompts the viewers to deliberate the source of individual associations with language.
184. Jannis Kounellis
1936-2017
Untitled fabric, buttons and string on steel panel 78 5/8 x 70 7/8 x 10 3/8 in. (199.8 x 180 x 26.5 cm.) Executed in 2012. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance Galeri Artist, Istanbul Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection
185. Armando Morales
1927-2011
Trois Baigneuses signed and dated “MORALES 93” lower right; further titled and dated “TROIS BAIGNEUSES, 93” on the stretcher oil and beeswax on canvas 23 5/8 x 28 3/4 in. (60 x 73 cm.) Executed in 1993. Estimate $70,000-90,000
Provenance Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris Christie’s, New York, November 26, 1996, lot 21 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Paris, Galerie Claude Bernard, Armando Morales: Peintures récentes, January 1995, no. 23, p. 23 (illustrated) Literature Catherine Loewer, Armando Morales: Monograph & Catalogue Raisonné, Volume II 1984 - 1993, Vaumarcus, 2010, no. 1993.3, p. 422 (illustrated)
Property from an Important European Collector
186. Francisco Toledo
b. 1940
Luz’ de Foco signed and dated “Toledo 60” on the reverse oil and sand on canvas 38 1/4 x 51 1/8 in. (96.8 x 130 cm.) Executed in 1960.
Provenance Mrs. Bergljot Skaugen, Oslo Galleri K, Oslo Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1980
Estimate $70,000-100,000
Exhibited Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus, Rodolfo Nieto, Francisco Toledo, Malerier og akvareller, February 10 March 4, 1962, no. 22
Propert from a Private Collection, New York
187. Mark Tobey
1890-1976
Desert Town (Wild City) signed and dated “Tobey 50” lower right oil and gouache on card mounted on Masonite 43 x 27 1/8 in. (109.2 x 68.9 cm.) Executed in 1950. Achim Moeller, Managing Principal of the Mark Tobey Project LLC, has confrmed the authenticity. The work is registered in the Mark Tobey archive with the number MT [132-1-3-11]. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance Willard Gallery, New York Betty McClean Gallery, Dallas Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris Michel Tapié, Paris (acquired by 1961) Galerie Beyeler, Basel Martha Jackson, Bufalo Mr. & Mrs. David K. Anderson, New York (acquired thence by descent) Christie’s, London, June 21, 2007, lot 380 Private Collection, New York (acquired at the above sale) Exhibited San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 5th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, January 24 - March 2, 1952, n.p. (illustrated) The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Mark Tobey, April 18 - May 14, 1952, no. 13 Paris, Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Tobey, November 27, 1959 January 16, 1960 Turin, Civico Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, da Boldini a Pollock, Pittura e scultura del XX secolo, October 12 November 5, 1961, p. 154 (illustrated, p. 130) Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Tobey, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, December 1970 – February 1971, no. 10 Washington, D.C., National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, Tribute to Mark Tobey, June 7 September 8, 1974, no. 17, p. 107 (illustrated, p. 43) New York, Haunch of Venison, Abstract Expressionism - A World Elsewhere, September 12 - November 12, 2008, no. 60, pp. 122, 149 (illustrated, p. 123) Literature Louise Baillard, “Art, San Francisco”, Arts & Architecture, vol. 69, no. 3, March 1952, p. 7 Mark Tobey, Basel, 1971, no. 11, pp. 23, 93 (illustrated, p. 37)
Created at a time when Mark Tobey began garnering widespread critical acclaim and achieving signifcant international recognition, Desert Town (Wild City), 1950, is a stellar example of the artist’s series of City paintings. Intricate and obsessive in their detail, Tobey’s web-like forms exist within the vast expanse of a sof, rose-hued feld of color simultaneously evoking the serenity of a desert landscape and the frantic movement found in everyday urban life. As William Seitz has noted, “…if one is willing to look long enough, the eye and mind are led to enter a unique world of form, space, and meaning” (William Seitz, “Tobey’s World View”, in Mark Tobey, exh. cat, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1962, p. 9). The abstract, calligraphic symbols laid atop Desert Town (Wild City) are redolent of Tobey’s fascination for – and sustained interaction with – various cultures, consolidated through voracious reading, chance encounters and a peripatetic lifestyle. Spanning the iconographic heritage of Western painting and the contemporary legacies of Asian art, as well as the supreme spirituality of the Bahá’í religion, which Tobey adhered to in 1918, the work’s multifarious, cosmopolitan associations profess an unapologetic sense of dynamism that has since come to defne the artist’s unique pictorial language. Desert Town (Wild City)’s storied provenance and exceptional exhibition history attest to its unique position within the artist’s oeuvre. Having resided in the collections of the acclaimed French art critic, curator and collector Michel Tapié, the legendary Galerie Beyeler in Basel, and Mr. and Mrs. Anderson – whose collection spanned the most signifcant movements of postwar American art – the work was created a time of consolidated success for Tobey. A year following its execution, the artist gained his frst major retrospective at Legion of Honor in San Francisco, immediately followed by another important retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Subsequent shows and prizes cemented Tobey’s place in the art historical canon, bringing further attention to the hand of a true master.
188. Alexander Calder
1898-1976
Brooch brass and steel wire 2 1/8 x 2 1/8 x 3/8 in. (5.4 x 5.4 x 1 cm.) Executed circa 1945, this work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A27179. Estimate $20,000-35,000 Provenance Elsie Hurlburt, Roxbury (gifed by the artist circa 1945) Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1977) Christie’s, New York, July 22, 2015, lot 17 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Actual size
189. Max Ernst
1891-1976
Portrait d’un ancêtre (Portrait of an ancestor) incised with the artist’s signature and number “max ernst VI/VII” and stamped with the Valsuani foundry mark on the reverse bronze with green patina 17 x 11 x 8 in. (43 x 28 x 20 cm.) Executed in 1975, this work is number 6 from an edition of 7 and is accompanied by a photo-certifcate stamped with the artist’s monogram. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Galerie Denise René Hans Mayer, Dusseldorf Paul Gredinger, Switzerland Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG, Zurich Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1989) Exhibited Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Max Ernst sculture/sculptures, May 16 – September 15, 1996, p. 192 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 198)
190. Rodolfo Nieto
1936-1985
Untitled signed “Nieto” lower right; further signed, inscribed and dated “Rodolfo Nieto TO-196423” on the reverse oil on canvas 36 1/4 x 28 3/4 in. (92 x 73 cm.) Painted in 1964. Estimate $20,000-30,000 Provenance Arild Wahlstrøm, Oslo Acquired from the above by the present owner in the late 1980s
191. Carlos Cruz-Diez
b. 1923
Sin título (serie Signos vegetales) signed and dated “Carlos Cruz-Diez 55” lower right; further signed, inscribed and dated “Carlos Cruz-Diez Masnou 1955” on the reverse oil on canvas 31 7/8 x 25 5/8 in. (81 x 65 cm.) Painted in 1955, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by the Atelier Cruz-Diez. This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Galería Buchholz, Madrid Private Collection, Texas (acquired from the above) Exhibited Madrid, Galería Buchholz, Carlos CruzDiez, April 24 - May 5, 1956, p. 2
192. Helen Frankenthaler
1928-2011
White Rose of Sharon signed and dated “Frankenthaler ’78” lower right; further signed and dated “Frankenthaler ’78” on the overlap acrylic on canvas 61 1/2 x 19 7/8 in. (156.2 x 50.5 cm.) Painted in 1978. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Christie’s, New York, November 13, 1986, lot 141 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Embracing Helen Frankenthaler’s stylistic language and idiosyncratic painterly techniques, White Rose of Sharon, 1978 is punctuated by luminescent bursts of color that bleed into the canvas fbers, distinguishing her controlled and considered practice from the gestural vigorousness of her contemporaries. Afer a 1951 introduction to Jackson Pollock’s monochrome ink works on paper, Frankenthaler began to interrogate the visual efects of directly staining the surface of paper or canvas, ultimately developing the acclaimed “soak-stain” approach utilized in White Rose of Sharon. By positioning the canvas fat on the studio foor and saturating the canvas with paint, Frankenthaler allowed the pigment to seep into the weave, producing a fuid, aqueous result similar to that of watercolor. This technique conspicuously infuenced the work of Color Field painters including Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, both of whom adopted her “soak-stain” method afer a 1953 visit to Frankenthaler’s studio. Despite a formal afnity to Color Field painting, however, she dared to challenge Clement Greenberg’s prohibition of presentation by engaging in a career-long dialogue with the natural landscape, as exemplifed by both its title and earthy hues of malachite and sand that permeate
White Rose of Sharon. Frankenthaler’s profound, relentless preoccupation with the natural environment was documented in the 2017 exhibition As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts. Throughout her oeuvre, Frankenthaler’s paintings became more densely fooded with color, as encapsulated by White Rose of Sharon, as well as more indirectly concerned with nature through abstraction. Airy white paint blooms at the century of the canvas in the present work, evoking the felicitous memory of a rose more than a fower itself; meanwhile, the thinned pigment and fatness of the picture plane ironically implies an optical sense of natural space, juxtaposing representation with abstraction and dimensionality with emotion. “My pictures are full of climates, abstract climates, and not in nature per se, but a feeling, and the feeling of an order that is associated more with nature,” Frankenthaler has elucidated. “I think art itself is order out of chaos, and nature is always fghting the same battle” (Helen Frankenthaler, quoted in Perry Miller Adato, Frankenthaler – Toward a New Climate, flm, 1978).
193. Franz Kline
1910-1962
Black, White, Brown signed “KLINE” lower right; further signed “KLINE” on the reverse oil, ink and paper collage mounted on board 11 3/8 x 8 1/4 in. (28.8 x 20.9 cm.) Executed in 1959-1960. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Galerie Änne Abels, Cologne (by 1962) Private Collection, Belgium Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Cologne, Galerie Änne Abels, Kline, May 11 June 9, 1962, no. 22
Executed in 1959-1960, Black, White, Brown distills the extraordinary compositional balance of energy and restraint that has cemented Franz Kline as one of the foremost Abstract Expressionists. Created in the same year that Kline represented the United States at the 30th Venice Biennale in 1960, Black, White, Brown debuted at Galerie Änne Abels in Cologne on May 11, 1962, just two days prior to Kline’s untimely death. Among the last works in Kline’s oeuvre, Black, White, Brown powerfully speaks to the peak moment of creativity in Kline’s oeuvre – one in which he pushed his practice beyond his signature black slashes to explore the potential of color and the surface with the medium of collage. Given that Kline’s seminal black-barred idiom originally emerged from the brush and ink drawings that depicted his urban surroundings in the 1940s, it is ftting that Black, White, Brown should be constructed of oil and ink on paper collage, a favored compositional structure for Kline’s small-scale works. In his studio, Kline would carefully adapt highly concentrated mixed-media collages and later project these works to large canvases. The present work powerfully puts into focus how Kline, like fellow Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning
“His sense of scale, that sine qua non of good painting, is marvelously precise. His big paintings can be as good as his small ones, a rare mastery in this period concerned with the power of magnitude...” Robert Motherwell, 1962
and Robert Motherwell, pioneered the medium of collage. Kline not only fused collage with the bold, fuid brushstrokes of his painterly practice, he in fact applied the notion of painterliness to collage itself – powerfully emulating the bold gesture of painting through the act of tearing paper on a more intimate scale. Black, White, Brown epitomizes how Kline’s embrace of color as a compositional element starting around 1956 amplifed the expressive force of his abstractions. In late works such as the present one, Kline approaches Rembrandt’s dramatic mastery of chiaroscuro, converting his black and white slashes into alternating tonalities of smoky painted space difused with rich mahogany pigment and single fash of red – giving rise to a complex composition charged with the same sense of dynamism and drama as his iconic slash paintings. As the critic Thomas H. Hesse commented on Kline’s metamorphosis, “White and black forms still soar, tumble and stand in as permanent a state of instability as ever…. But where before white and black edges met along a plane that had been painted and repainted, inched back and forth for months, now these passages are more spontaneous, and white canvas and charcoal appear as colors along contours and within shapes” (Thomas H. Hess, quoted in Franz Kline: 1910-1962, exh. cat., Castello di Rivoli, Turin, 2004, p. 319.)
“Through a painting we can see the whole world.” Hans Hofmann
194. Hans Hofmann
1880-1966
Fragrance signed and dated “hans hofmann 62” lower right; further signed, titled, inscribed and dated “Cat. #1467 Fragrance 1962 hans hofmann” on the reverse oil on canvas 48 x 36 in. (121.9 x 91.4 cm.) Painted in 1962. Estimate $280,000-350,000 Provenance Estate of the Artist (from 1966) André Emmerich Gallery, New York (acquired from the above in 1973) Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1973) Christie’s, New York, November 14, 1995, lot 16 Private Collection Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York (acquired from the above in 2011) Private Collection, California (acquired from the above in 2011)
Exhibited Memphis, Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Art Today, March 31 - April 28, 1963, no. 15, n.p. (illustrated) New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Hans Hofmann, January 6 - 31, 1968 Philadelphia, Makler Gallery, Hans Hofmann: Oils and Watercolors, April 18 - May 22, 1969 Montreal, Galerie Godard Lefort, Hans Hofmann, October 1971 Bay Harbor Islands, Berenson Gallery, André Emmerich Gallery at the Berenson, February 26 - April 1972 New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Hans Hofmann ten major works, January 6 - 24, 1973, n.p. (illustrated) New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Hans Hofmann Major Paintings 1954 - 1965, January 5 - 26, 1985 Literature Grifn Smith, “Hofmann Art Brightens Gallery Hopping Scene”, Miami Herald, March 12, 1972, p. 6K Grace Glueck, “The 20th Century Artists Most Admired by Other Artists”, ARTnews, no. 9, November 1977, p. 94 (illustrated) Britta E. Buhlmann, ed., Hans Hofmann: Magnum Opus, exh. cat., MKP Museum Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern, 2013, p. 137 Suzi Villiger, Hans Hofmann Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Volume III: 1952-1965, London, 2014, P1431, p. 369
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection, New York
195. Willem de Kooning
1904-1997
Study for a Woman signed “de Kooning” lower right graphite on paper 18 5/8 x 11 3/4 in. (47.3 x 29.8 cm.) Executed in 1953. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Private Collection, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited London, Gagosian Gallery, Drawings, January 29 – March 27, 2004, p. 29 (illustrated)
196. David Smith
1906-1965
A Sketch for a Sculpture (Raven Series) spray enamel on paper 17 1/2 x 11 3/8 in. (44.5 x 29 cm.) Executed in 1959. The work is registered with the David Smith Estate under #7359.178PE. Estimate $30,000-40,000 Provenance Collection of Thure Krarup, Glens Falls (gifed by the artist in 1959) Collection of Robert Riesman Christie’s, New York, October 8, 1992, lot 157 Private Collection Stair Galleries, Hudson, April 21, 2007, lot 146 Umstedart, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2008
197. Sandú Darié
1908-1991
Untitled signed “Darié” lower right tempera on paperboard 21 1/4 x 16 5/8 in. (53.9 x 42.3 cm.) Executed circa 1950s, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by Robertos Cobas Amate. Estimate $28,000-32,000 Provenance Private Collection, Cuba Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2011
Property from an Esteemed Private Collection
198. Atsuko Tanaka
1932-2005
85-E signed and dated “’85 e Atsuko Tanaka” synthetic polymer paint on canvas 39 3/8 x 31 1/2 in. (100 x 80 cm.) Executed in 1985. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Private Collection Shinwa Auction Co., Tokyo, April 5, 2008, lot 321 Private Collection, Milan Hauser & Wirth Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2013
Painted in 1985, 85-E presents a powerful continuation of Atsuko Tanaka’s pioneering performances and installations from the mid-1950s. A leading member of the Gutai group, Tanaka set the foundation of much of her painterly practice in the works she presented in the frst and second installments of the Gutai Art Exhibition, in 1955 and 1956 respectively. Work (Bell) consisted of a circuit of ringing bells, which, when activated by viewers, created a chain of chimes throughout the exhibition that grew and waned in volume; Electric Dress, perhaps Tanaka’s best-known work, presented a wearable contraption composed entirely of light bulbs and tubes. Tanaka notably lef an indelible impression on Michel Tapié, who highlighted her when remarking in his A Mental Reckoning of My First Trip to Japan: “I have a deep respect for the whole group [Gutai] as a group, but I would like to name four artists who should appear alongside the most established
Wassily Kandinsky, Concentric Circles, 1913. Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany/Artothek/Bridgeman Images, Artwork © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
international fgures: Shiraga Kazuo, Shimamoto Shozo, Yoshihara Jiro, and Tanaka Atsuko” (Michel Tapié, A Mental Reckoning of My First Trip to Japan, New York, 1957, n.p.) Tanaka’s innovations with light art soon prompted abstracted paintings such as 85-E, which embodies the ethos of Electric Dress in the two-dimensional form. The painting’s copious bursts of radial, vibrant color and disorderly trailed lines allude to the tangled circuitry featured in her happening that unite art and technology. At a time of urbanization in Japan, this work belongs to her iconic series of circle paintings that serves as a time-piece for an advancing civilization and Tanaka’s role in its progression. The interconnectivity of orbs and the movement between them visually conveys the dynamism and immediacy of the continuous alteration of society through a singular image. Encapsulating Tanaka’s groundbreaking vision, 85-E pulsates with unbridled energy as a kaleidoscopic constellation of circles and galvanic, dripped lines burst across the expanse of the canvas. Working with her canvases on the groundfoor of her studio, Tanaka created this painting by frst freely creating bright circles, and then adding meandering lines to join them to one another. Tanaka’s efervescent forms are charged with an energy that electrifes the pathways dancing between them, brilliantly enhanced by her use of synthetic polymer paint – her favored medium for its fuidity and highshine fnish. Acting as a two-dimensional performance, 85-E zestfully refects Tanaka’s almost singular preoccupation with capturing energy itself – radiating with a chromatic brilliance comparable to Untitled, 1964, from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
199. Shozo Shimamoto
1928-2013
Untitled signed “S Shimamoto� lower lef acrylic and broken glass on canvas 41 x 25 1/2 in. (104.1 x 64.8 cm.) Executed in 2010, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by the Shozo Shimamoto Association. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Whitestone Gallery, Tokyo Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Tokyo, Whitestone Gallery, Shozo Shimamoto, October 30 - November 24, 2014
200. Sam Gilliam
b. 1933
Pantheon I signed, titled and dated “Pantheon I Sam Gilliam 1983� on the reverse acrylic on canvas with collage, enamel on aluminum 59 1/2 x 52 x 7 in. (151.1 x 132.1 x 17.8 cm.) Executed in 1983. Estimate $70,000-100,000 Provenance McIntosh-Drysdale Gallery, Houston Acquired from the above by the present owner circa 1983-1984
201. Romare Bearden
1911-1988
Mecklenburg Monday signed “Romare Bearden” upper right; further signed, titled and dated “‘Mecklenberg - Monday’ 1982 Romare Bearden” on a label afxed to the reverse graphite, watercolor, ink and paper collage on board 6 3/4 x 4 3/4 in. (17.1 x 12.1 cm.) Executed in 1982. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance ACA Galleries, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
202. Saul Steinberg
1914-1999
The Real Table incised with the artist’s signature and date “STEINBERG 1974” lower right corner of the table top; further signed and dated “STEINBERG 1972” lower right of the paper sheet wood drafing table, steel and wood collage and oil, watercolor and pencil on paper 31 7/8 x 30 7/8 x 23 1/8 in. (81 x 78.6 x 58.6 cm.) Executed in 1972-1974. Estimate $25,000-35,000 Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Private Collection, Europe (acquired from the above) Exhibited New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; Washington, D.C., Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Saul Steinberg, April 14 - November 26, 1978, no. 248
203. Richard Estes
b. 1932
Turkey Landscape signed and dated “R ESTES 93� lower right oil on canvas on board 12 1/4 x 27 1/4 in. (12.25 x 69.2 cm.) Painted in 1993. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Acquired from the above by the present owner
204. Philip Pearlstein
b. 1934
Model with Empire State Building signed and dated “PEARLSTEIN 92” lower right; further signed, titled and dated “PHILIP PEARLSTEIN MODEL WITH EMPIRE STATE BUILDING, 1992” on the backing board oil on canvas 72 x 60 in. (182.9 x 152.4 cm.) Painted in 1992. Estimate $70,000-100,000 Provenance Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York DC Moore Gallery, New York Robert Miller Gallery, New York Private Collection (acquired from the above) Sotheby’s, New York, November 10, 2010, lot 223 Acquired at above sale by the present owner Exhibited New York, Hirschl & Adler Modern, Recent Watercolors & Drawings, February 1993 New York, ACA Galleries, The City, New York Visions, 1900-1995, February 1 - March 25, 1995 New York, DC Moore Gallery, The Contemporary City: Red Grooms, Yvonne Jacquette, Jacob Lawrence, Philip Pearlstein, Paul Wonner, March 3 - 27, 1999 Literature Linda Yablonsky, “Philip Pearlstein, Hirschl & Adler Modern”, Artforum, vol. 31, no. 6, February 1993, p. 98 Pepe Karmel, “Art in Review; ‘The City, New York Visions, 1900-1995’ ACA Galleries”, The New York Times, March 24, 1995, p. 72 Grace Glueck, “ART IN REVIEW; ‘The Contemporary City’: Red Grooms, Yvonne Jacquette, Jacob Lawrence, Philip Pearlstein and Paul Wonner”, The New York Times, March 12, 1999, p. 103 Robert Storr, Philip Pearlstein Since 1983, New York, 2002 (illustrated on the frontispiece)
205. Tom Wesselmann
1931-2004
Study for Bedroom Blonde, Black and Green Pillows signed and dated “Wesselmann 86” lower right pencil and Liquitex on Bristol board 14 1/4 x 16 3/4 in. (36.2 x 42.5 cm.) Executed in 1986. Estimate $70,000-100,000
Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Donald Morris Gallery, Inc., Birmingham Private Collection Christie’s, New York, May 4, 1989, lot 224 Private Collection Sotheby’s, New York, February 26, 2007, lot 29 Private Collection Phillips, New York, November 14, 2014, lot 181 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
206. Tom Wesselmann
1931-2004
Study for Still Life with Matisse & Johns signed and dated “Wesselmann 92” lower right; further signed “Tom Wesselmann” on the reverse Liquitex on Bristol board 16 x 19 3/8 in. (40.6 x 49.2 cm.) Executed in 1992. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance The Estate of Tom Wesselmann Private Collection, California Phillips, New York, November 14, 2014, lot 182 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
207. Tom Wesselmann
1931-2004
Double Study for Bedroom Painting #22 signed and dated “Tom Wesselmann 69” on the upper edge; further signed, titled, and dated “DOUBLE STUDY FOR BEDROOM PAINTING #22 1969 Wesselmann 69” on the overlap acrylic on canvas 11 x 16 in. (27.9 x 40.6 cm.) Painted in 1969.
Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Galerie des 4 Mouvements, Paris Christian Fayt Art Gallery, Knokke-Le-Zoute Sotheby’s, London, February 10, 2006, lot 245 Private Collection Christie’s, New York, November 13, 2014, lot 354 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Estimate $70,000-100,000
Exhibited Paris, Galerie des 4 Mouvements, Tom Wesselmann: Peintures, March 7 - 31, 1974
208. Patrick Nagel
1945–1984
Kristen signed “Nagel 1” lower lef acrylic on canvas mounted on wood 30 x 20 1/4 in. (76.2 x 51.5 cm.) Executed circa 1982-1983. Estimate $60,000-90,000 Provenance 11th Street Gallery, Santa Monica Private Collection Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers, Copenhagen, October 3, 2011, lot 708 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Literature Jefrey Book, The Art of Patrick Nagel, New York, 1985, pp. 140 - 141
Rendered with an economy of line and fat, cool planes of color, Patrick Nagel’s Kristen presents a piercing portrait that distills the artist’s iconic aesthetic with which he garnered widespread popularity in the 1980s. Nagel, who studied art at Chouinard Art Institute in the 1960s, emerged in the Pop era alongside contemporaries such as Tom Wesselmann and Andy Warhol. While similarly working with a Pop aesthetic, Nagel infused elements from Deco and Japanese Woodblock prints into his graphic works – echoing such artistic forebears as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. A skilled illustrator, Nagel frst photographed models before using ink and acrylic to boldly emphasize features. In the present work, ghostly pale skin is set against jet black hair – her features evocative of Nagel’s portrait that featured on Duran Duran’s Rio album in 1982 and catapulted him to widespread acclaim. Kristen presents us with the “Nagel Women” par excellence, perfectly encapsulating his reductive aesthetic. As actress Joan Collins recalled, “I remember when he (Patrick Nagel) frst photographed me he remarked that my lips were my most outstanding facial feature. He said they seemed to have an anatomy of their own. Never have lips felt so naked. He had a way of seeing every detail and revealing them all on canvas” (Joan Collins, quoted in Elena G. Millie, Nagel: The Art of Patrick Nagel, New York, 1985, p. 16). Though Nagel passed away prematurely in 1984, his works continue to resonate – with important examples held in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, The Smithsonian Institution and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
Property from a Private Collection, Florida
209. Christo
b. 1935
Surrounded Islands (Project for Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida) (i) signed and dated “Christo 1982” upper lef; further titled “Surrounded Islands (Project for Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida)” lower edge fabric, charcoal, wax crayon, graphite, enamel paint and printed aerial photograph on card, in 2 Plexiglas boxes (i) 11 x 28 in. (28 x 71.1 cm.) (ii) 22 x 28 in. (55.9 x 71.7 cm.) overall 33 x 28 1/4 in. (83.9 x 71.7 cm.) Executed in 1982, this work is registered in Christo’s archives.
Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Private Collection Christie’s, London, June 29, 2000, lot 662 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
210. Christo
b. 1935
Running Fence (Project for Sonoma County and Marin County, State of California) (ii) signed “Christo” lower right; further titled “RUNNING FENCE (PROJECT FOR Sonoma County and Marin County, STATE OF CALIFORNIA) lower lef charcoal, pastel, wax crayon and printed paper collage on paper, in 2 Plexiglas boxes (i) 15 1/2 x 96 1/2 in. (39.4 x 245.1 cm.) (ii) 42 1/2 x 96 1/2 in. (108 x 245.1 cm.) overall 58 x 96 1/2 in. (147.4 x 245.1 cm.) Executed in 1976, this work is registered in Christo’s archives.
Estimate $70,000-90,000 Provenance Peder Bonnier Gallery, New York Private Collection Sotheby’s, New York, November 11, 1993, lot 413 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
211. John Chamberlain
1927-2011
Untitled painted and chrome-plated steel 7 1/2 x 11 x 11 in. (19.1 x 27.9 x 27.9 cm.) Executed in 1985. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1987 Literature Julie Sylvester, John Chamberlain: A Catalogue RaisonnĂŠ of the Sculpture: 1954-1985, New York, 1986, no. 798, p. 218 (illustrated)
212. John Chamberlain
1927-2011
Fleabane (Marsh) aluminum foil with acrylic lacquer and polyester resin 16 7/8 x 18 7/8 x 23 in. (42.9 x 47.9 x 58.4 cm.) Executed in 1973. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Ivan Karp, United States (acquired directly from the artist) Ben Birillo, United States Mourtala Diop, Dakar Guy Pieters Gallery, Knokke-Heist Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Julie Sylvester, ed., John Chamberlain: A Catalogue RaisonnĂŠ of the Sculpture, 1954 - 1985, New York, 1986, no. 423, p. 124 (illustrated)
213. Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Portrait of a Woman (Linda Oxenberg) signed and dated “Andy Warhol 85” on the overlap; further stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York, initialed “VF” and numbered “PA50.004” on the overlap acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas 40 x 40 in. (101.6 x 101.6 cm.) Executed in 1985. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York Lococo Fine Art, St. Louis Private Collection, St. Louis Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York Waddington Custot Galleries, London Galerie Hopkins, Paris Acquired from the above by the present owner
“It was Warhol’s masterstroke to realize that the best method of electrifying the old-master portrait tradition with sufcient energy [was] to absorb the real, living world.” Robert Rosenblum
214. Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Elixir de Markof Royal Jelly stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc., New York, initialed “VF” and numbered “325.010” on the reverse ink on Strathmore paper 14 3/8 x 11 1/8 in. (36.5 x 28.2 cm.) Executed circa 1960. Estimate $18,000-25,000 Provenance Private Collection, New York Anthony d’Ofay Gallery, London Private Collection, London Collection of Donald Rosenfeld, New York (acquired in 2006) Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2009 Exhibited New York, Paul Kasmin Gallery, Andy Warhol, Still Life Drawings, 1954-1985, November 20, 2002 - January 11, 2003 Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie; London, Tate Modern; Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Andy Warhol Retrospective, October 2, 2001 - August 18, 2002, no. 30, p. 306 (illustrated, p. 83)
215. Susan Rothenberg
b. 1945
Untitled signed and dated “Susan Rothenberg 1984” on the reverse charcoal, graphite, ink and crayon on paper 21 x 17 in. (53.3 x 43.2 cm.) Executed in 1984. Estimate $8,000-12,000 Provenance Willard Gallery, New York Flanders Contemporary Art, Minneapolis Private Collection, Minneapolis Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above)
“Rothenberg always liked to play on contradictions between the quick, snapshot nature of her chosen image (a galloping horse, a teetering bicyclist, Mondrian solemnly turning like a mantis on the dance foor) and the nuanced and obviously slow way it was presented.” Robert Hughes, TIME Magazine, 1987
216. Eduardo Terrazas
b. 1936
2.30, From the series “Tablas” signed “E Terrazas” on the reverse wool yarn on wooden board covered with Campeche wax 47 x 47 x 1 1/2 in. (119.4 x 119.4 x 3.8 cm.) Executed in 1972. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City Private Collection, Puerto Rico (acquired from the above in 2012) Exhibited Mexico City, Palacio de Bellas Artes de la Ciudad de México; Santiago, Museo Nacional de las Bellas Artes; La Paz, Museo Nacional de Arte; Caracas, Fundación Eugenio Mendoza, Eduardo Terrazas: Tablas, May 1972 - February 1974
217. Kazuya Sakai
1927-2001
Pintura N°14, Série II signed, titled and dated “Kazuya Sakai, Pintura No 14, Serie II Kazuya Sakai, 74” on the reverse acrylic on unprimed canvas 63 x 51 in. (160 x 129.5 cm.) Painted in 1974, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by Galería Vasari. Estimate $30,000-50,000 Provenance Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Christie’s, New York, November 20, 2007, lot 158 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
218. Frank Bowling, R.A.
b. 1936
Mooring signed, titled and dated “‘MOORING’ FRANK BOWLING 2008” on the stretcher; further titled “MOORING” on the reverse oil, collage and mixed media on canvas 33 1/2 x 26 1/2 in. (85.1 x 67.3 cm.) Executed in 2008. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Spanierman Modern, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
Frank Bowling, O.B.E.
“My poured surfaces didn’t billow like Rothko’s. Mine billowed like the kind of heat haze that you get in Guyana in the middle of the day. The sun is so hot that the water evaporates, rises and stays still: it is just there.” Frank Bowling
Frank Bowling has revitalized contemporary painting with his extraordinarily atmospheric practice, evolving from Bacon-esque fguration into abstraction in a richly variegated body of work which spans the course of his lifelong exploration of color theory and the qualities of paint. Now 85 years old, Bowling has witnessed a landmark rediscovery of his work in the past decade, culminating this year in the artist’s frst major retrospective at the Tate Gallery in London, which followed close on the heels of Soul of a Nation at the Brooklyn Museum and the Tate Modern, in which Bowling was honoured as the only British artist to feature in the critically acclaimed exhibition. Executed between 2008 and 2010, the following four works by Frank Bowling illuminate the artist’s reconciliation of pure abstraction with poetic suggestion in a diaphanous, visually arresting manner that marks a new point of entry for Formalism in the 21st century. Born in Guyana in 1936, Bowling moved to London when he was 19 years old and studied painting at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney and R.B. Kitaj. At his graduation in 1962, Bowling was awarded the Royal Academy Schools silver medal to Hockney’s gold, portending the great things to come for both artists. His relationship with the institution would come full circle when Bowling was elected as the frst black Royal Academician in the history of the 250-year-old institution in 2005. Yet in the years that followed graduation, Bowling was disappointed in being
pigeonholed as a “Caribbean” artist in London. “It seemed that everyone was expecting me to paint some kind of protest art out of postcolonial discussion. For a while I fell for it,” Bowling recalled in a 2012 interview (Frank Bowling, quoted in Laura Barnett, “Frank Bowling”, The Guardian, July 2, 2012, online). Instead, Bowling’s art evolved from fguration to pure abstraction, and since 1972 his works have exclusively explored power of painting and its efects, in the tradition of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. He moved to New York, forging strong friendships with such notables as Clement Greenberg, who encouraged him in his commitment to abstraction. Yet Bowling’s watershed moment wouldn’t occur until 1987, when the Tate Gallery, London bought his painting Spreadout Ron Kitaj - the frst painting by a black artist to be acquired by the Tate.
Frank Bowling, photographed by the artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin at his home in London, 2012. Photo © Broomberg & Chanarin. Courtesy the artists and Lisson Gallery, Artwork © 2019 Frank Bowling/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London
In the present works from 2010 - Mooring, Resting, Alighting and Hovering - Bowling has masterfully synthesized the fowing pigment of his “poured paintings” of the 1970s, the aqueous depths of his 1980s paintings, which resemble shimmering riverbeds, and the sculptural texture of his paintings of the 2000s. Resting, Alighting and Hovering feature richly worked constellations of color in the center, stabilized on either side by color stiles which suggest the infuence of Morris Louis’s stripe paintings. Pieces of canvas assembled into the ground add textural weight to the sun-struck brilliance of the paint, recalling Jasper Johns’ seamless integration of collaged canvas elements into his painting. Yet though these works unite a lifetime’s work studying the potential of painting-as-painting, Bowling is never bound by formalism alone. “Formalist art… is almost always hard on itself and indulges in rigorous self-criticism, within the given discipline alone. The practice of painting within the boundaries of Formalism
provides a setting in which I am able to test and ultimately prove my freedom,” Bowling wrote in 1972 (Frank Bowling, quoted in Mel Gooding, Frank Bowling Paintings 1974-2010, exh. cat., Spanierman Modern, New York, p. 4). All four works are also archetypal of Bowling’s predilection for enigmatic, open-ended titles. Before he studied art, Bowling set out to be a poet, and his love for literature is as evident in his allusive titles as it is in his history as a rigorous theoretician. All three titles suggest Bowling’s mastery of the aura, translated into ravishingly beautiful canvases that transfx the viewer even as they radiate a sense of calm transcendence, altar-like. Bowling is a “painter’s painter, and a visionary” says Gilane Tawadros, curator and founding director of the Institute of International Visual Arts in London. “His experiments in paint in the 1960s, and since, were way ahead of their time. He paved the way for other artists for whom political and aesthetic considerations are not seen as separate” (Gilane Tawadros, quoted in Maya Jaggi, “The Weight of Color,” The Guardian, February 23, 2007, online).
219. Frank Bowling, R.A.
b. 1936
Three works: (i) Resting; (ii) Alighting; (iii) Hovering (i) signed, titled and dated “2010 FRANK BOWLING ‘RESTING’” on the stretcher (ii) signed, titled and dated “FRANK BOWLING ‘ALIGHTING’ 2010” on the stretcher (iii) signed, titled and dated “FRANK BOWLING ‘HOVERING’ 2010” on the stretcher acrylic, oil and collage on canvas (i) 24 7/8 x 30 3/4 in. (63.2 x 78.1 cm.) (ii) 25 x 30 in. (63.5 x 76.2 cm.) (iii) 25 1/2 x 30 in. (64.8 x 76.2 cm.) Executed in 2010. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Spanierman Modern, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Spanierman Modern, Frank Bowling Solo Survey Exhibition: Paintings 1974-2010, September 14 October 16, 2010, p. 5 (Resting, no. 10, p. 29, illustrated, p. 26; Alighting and Hovering illustrated, p. 28)
220. Kenneth Noland
1924-2010
Winds 82-28 signed, titled and dated “Kenneth Noland © 1982 Winds 82-28” on the reverse acrylic on handmade embossed paper 88 3/4 x 32 in. (225.4 x 81.3 cm.) Executed in 1982-1983. Estimate $20,000-30,000 Provenance André Emmerich Gallery, New York Private Collection Doyle, New York, May 9, 2012, lot 178 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
221. Robert Motherwell
1915-1991
Pall Mall on Blue signed with the artist’s initials and dated “RM 72” lower right acrylic and pasted papers on canvas board 29 3/4 x 11 3/4 in. (75.6 x 29.8 cm.) Executed in 1972. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Blum Helman Gallery, New York (acquired in 1974) Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Princeton University Art Museum, Robert Motherwell: Recent Work, January 5 – February 17, 1973, no. 32, p. 72 Seattle, Current Editions, Robert Motherwell: Works on Paper, Including the Illuminations for A La Pintura, March 24 – April 29, 1973 Literature Jack Flam, Katy Rogers and Tim Cliford, eds., Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941-1991, Volume 3, Collages and Paintings on Paper and Paperboard, New Haven, 2012, no. C366, p. 180 (illustrated)
222. Richard Pettibone
b. 1938
Frank Stella Takht-I-Sulayman II, 1968 signed, titled and dated “Stella Takht-I-Solyiaman [sic] II 1968 R Pettibone 1968” on the stretcher polymer and graphite on shaped canvas, in artist’s frame 6 1/4 x 12 1/4 in. (15.8 x 31.1 cm.) Executed in 1968. Estimate $30,000-50,000 Provenance Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1995 Exhibited Los Angeles, Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art, Simulacra: The Art of Appropriation, 2007
223. Sol LeWitt
1928-2007
Untitled signed with the artist’s initials and dated “S.L. 6.4.69” lower right ink and graphite on paper 12 x 12 in. (30.5 x 30.5 cm.) Executed on June 4, 1969. Estimate $30,000-40,000 Provenance Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco (acquired directly from the artist) Private Collection Sotheby’s, New York, May 13, 1981, lot 136 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Property from a Distinguished New York Collection
224. Sol LeWitt
1928-2007
Complex Form signed and dated “S. LEWITT 87” lower right gouache on paper 29 3/4 x 22 1/4 in. (75.6 x 56.5 cm.) Executed in 1987. Estimate $18,000-22,000 Provenance John Weber Gallery, New York Collection of Dr. Robert and Helen Mandelbaum Christie’s, New York, March 6, 2015, lot 110 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
225. Sol LeWitt
1928-2007
Untitled signed “S. Lewitt� lower right gouache on paper 22 1/2 x 22 5/8 in. (57.3 x 57.5 cm.) Executed in 1997. Estimate $15,000-20,000 Provenance Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
226. Howard Mehring
1931–1978
Primal acrylic and collage on canvas 69 3/4 x 69 7/8 in. (177.2 x 177.5 cm.) Executed in 1961-1962. Estimate $10,000-15,000 Provenance Collection of Vincent Melzac, Washington, D.C. Conner Contemporary, Washington, D.C. Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Howard Mehring: a Retrospective Exhibition, December 10, 1977 - January 22, 1978, no. 26, p. 62 (illustrated, pp. 17, 44) Washington, D.C., Salve Regina Gallery, The Catholic University of America, Department of Art, Howard Mehring, Classical Abstraction, Paintings from the Vincent Melzac Collection, September 12 October 25, 2002, no. 6, pp. 10, 23 (illustrated, p. 11) Literature Benjamin Forgey, “Mehring: The Greatness of His Art Assembled”, The Washington Star, December 17, 1977, p. F-25 (illustrated) Michael Duncan, “Thomas Downing at Conner Contemporary and Howard Mehring at the Catholic University”, Art in America, May 2003, p. 153
227. Thomas Downing
1928-1985
Blue Tender signed, titled and dated “Blue Tender - Downing - 11/64” on the reverse acrylic on canvas 87 3/4 x 87 1/4 in. (222.9 x 221.6 cm.) Painted in November 1964. Estimate $30,000-50,000 Provenance Collection of Vincent Melzac, Washington, D.C. Conner Contemporary, Washington, D.C. Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Vincent Melzac Collection: Modernist American Art Featuring New York Abstract Expressionism and Washington Color Painting, December 18, 1970 February 7, 1971, no. 45, p. 94 Washington, D.C., Conner Contemporary Art, Thomas Downing: Origin of the Dot, Paintings from the Vincent Melzac Collection, September 24 - October 26, 2002, p. 19 (illustrated) Literature Blake Gopnik, “Living Colors”, The Washington Post, September 29, 2002, online Michael Duncan, “Thomas Downing at Conner Contemporary and Howard Mehring at the Catholic University”, Art in America, May 2003, p. 153 (illustrated)
228. Sam Gilliam
b. 1933
Untitled signed and dated “S. Gilliam ‘95” lower lef acrylic on handmade paper, metal and polyproplene on wood, in artist’s frame 56 3/4 x 37 in. (144.1 x 94 cm.) Executed in 1995. Estimate $15,000-20,000 Provenance Baumgartner Galleries, Inc., Washington D.C. Weschler’s Auctioneers & Appraisers, Rockville, December 4, 2015, lot 264 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
229. Sam Gilliam
b. 1933
Untitled signed and inscribed “Sam Gilliam 16001B� lower right watercolor on handmade paper 23 1/2 x 18 1/4 in. (59.7 x 46.4 cm.) Executed in 1967. Estimate $10,000-15,000 Provenance Private Collection, Philadelphia Swann Galleries, New York, December 15, 2015, lot 80 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Property from the Private Collection of William Harris Smith, Chicago
230. Michael Goldberg
1924-2007
Untitled signed “Goldberg� on the stretcher oil on canvas 95 x 88 1/2 in. (241.3 x 224.8 cm.) Painted in 1963.
Estimate $30,000-40,000 Provenance Knoedler & Co., New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from the Private Collection of William Harris Smith, Chicago
231. Alfred Leslie
b. 1927
Seated Figure signed and dated “Alfred Leslie 52” lower center; further signed and titled “Alfred Leslie seated fgure’” on the stretcher oil on canvas 66 1/2 x 51 1/2 in. (168.9 x 130.8 cm.) Painted in 1952. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York The Estate of Floriano Vecchi, New York Vincent Vallarino Fine Art, New York McCormick Gallery, Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner
232. Sam Francis
1923-1994
Untitled gouache on paper 13 5/8 x 5 1/2 in. (34.5 x 13.9 cm.) Executed circa 1955. This work is identifed with the interim identifcation number of SF55-138 in consideration for the forthcoming Sam Francis: Catalogue RaisonnĂŠ of Unique Works on Paper. This information is subject to change as scholarship continues by the Sam Francis Foundation. Estimate $30,000-40,000 Provenance Private Collection, Seattle (acquired circa 1957) Private Collection, Indianapolis (thence by descent) Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles (acquired from the above circa 2009) Private Collection, California (acquired from the above in 2011) Exhibited Seattle, Zoe Dusanne Gallery, Sam Francis, March 14 - April 7, 1956
233. Milton Resnick
1917-2004
Idyl signed and dated “Resnick 57” lower lef; further titled “Idyl” on a label afxed to the reverse oil on canvas 27 x 24 in. (68.6 x 61 cm.) Painted in 1957. Estimate $12,000-18,000 Provenance Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner on September 2, 2004
234. Waltercio Caldas
b. 1946
Wood Wind wood 27 1/8 x 50 3/8 x 11 3/4 in. (68.9 x 128 x 29.8 cm.) Executed in 1994, this work is number 2 from an edition of 4. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance The Artist Estúdio Guanabara, Rio de Janeiro Acquired from the above by present owner Exhibited New York, Luhring Augustine, Empty House Casa Vazia, June 27 - August 28, 2015 Madrid, Santander Art Gallery, Visiones de la Tierra / El mundo planeado. Colección Luís Paulo Montenegro, February 20 - June 10, 2018, p. 265 (another example exhibited and illustrated)
235. Pedro Coronel
1923–1985
Roma signed, titled, inscribed and dated “12 Pedro Coronel, Roma, 69.” on the reverse oil on canvas 45 5/8 x 35 in. (116 x 89 cm.) Painted in 1969, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by Martin Coronel. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Galería de Arte Mexicano, Mexico City Nanette Gordon, Pittsburgh Thence by descent to the present owner Exhibited Mexico City, Museo de Arte Moderno, Pintura de Pedro Coronel, February 1970
236. Cundo Bermúdez
1914-2008
La Chismosa signed and dated “Cundo Bermúdez 93” lower lef oil on canvas 40 x 31 3/4 in. (101.6 x 80.6 cm.) Painted in 1993, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by the Cundo Bermúdez studio. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Bruno Garcia Collection, Miami Maxoly Gallery, Miami Private Collection, Florida (acquired from the above) Literature Vicente Báez, ed., Cundo Bermúdez, Madrid, 2000, pp. 220, 223 (illustrated, p. 224)
237. Roberto Fabelo
b. 1950
Cautiva titled “Cautiva” lower lef; further signed and dated “Fabelo 2013” lower right acyclic on embroidered silk 67 x 48 in. (170.2 x 121.9 cm.) Executed in 2013. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
238. Carlos Rojas
1933-1997
Untitled (from the Mujeres en Faja series) signed and dated “C Royas /62” on the reverse oil, painted board and fabric collage on canvas 31 1/2 x 31 1/2 in. (80 x 80 cm.) Executed in 1962, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by Luis Fonseca. Estimate $25,000-35,000 Provenance Dr. Juan Carlos Escruceria, Bogotá Private Collection, Colombia (acquired from the above)
239. Shuji Mukai
b. 1940
Untitled signed and dated “Shuji Mukai 2015� on the reverse acrylic, enamel and wood on panel 57 1/4 x 38 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (145.5 x 97.8 x 8.9 cm.) Executed in 2015. Estimate $20,000-30,000 Provenance Whitestone Gallery, Tokyo Two x Two: For AIDS and Art, Dallas Museum of Art, October 24, 2015, lot 85 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Property from the Private Collection of William Harris Smith, Chicago
240. Louise Nevelson
1899-1988
Untitled signed and dated “Nevelson 65� lower right wood collage 23 1/2 x 20 in. (59.7 x 50.8 cm.) Executed in 1965. Estimate $20,000-30,000 Provenance PaceWildenstein, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited London, Wildenstein & Co., Louise Nevelson Sculpture and Collage, April 30 - May 29, 1981, no. 38
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Sale Information Auction & Viewing Location 450 Park Avenue New York 10022
20th Century & Contemporary Art Department
Auction License 2013224
Auction Wednesday, 15 May 2019, 11am
Head of Sale John McCord +1 212 940 1261 jmccord@phillips.com
Auctioneers Hugues Joffre - 2028495 Sarah Krueger - 1460468 Henry Highley - 2008889 Adam Clay - 2039323 Jonathan Crockett - 2056239 Samuel Mansour - 2059023 Rebecca Tooby-Desmond - 2058901 Susan Abeles - 2074459 Aurel Bacs – 2047217 Blake Koh – 2066237 Susannah Brockman – 2058779 Rebekah Bowling - 2078967
Viewing 3 – 15 May Monday – Saturday 10am–6pm Sunday 12pm–6pm Sale Designation When sending in written bids or making enquiries please refer to this sale as NY010419 or 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session. Absentee and Telephone Bids tel +1 212 940 1228 fax +1 212 924 1749 bidsnewyork@phillips.com
Associate Specialist Patrizia Koenig +1 212 940 1279 pkoenig@phillips.com Administrator Julia Hirschberg +1 212 940 1264 jhirschberg@phillips.com Property Manager Ryan Russo +1 347 703 4344 rrusso@phillips.com Photography Jean Bourbon Kent Pell Mark Babushkin Special Thanks Paige Auerbach Anna Campbell Orlann Capazorio Chanah Hadad Nor Kagge Christine Knorr Andrea Koronkiewicz Clara Krzentowski Madeline Madia Jef Velazquez
Catalogues catalogues@phillips.com New York +1 212 940 1240 London +44 20 7318 4024 Hong Kong +852 2318 2000 $35/€25/£22 at the gallery Client Accounting Sylvia Leitao +1 212 940 1231 Michael Carretta +1 212 940 1232 Buyer Accounts Dawniel Perry +1 212 940 1317 Seller Accounts Carolina Swan +1 212 940 1253 Client Services 450 Park Avenue +1 212 940 1200 Shipping Anaar Desai +1 212 940 1320 Daren Khan +1 212 940 1335
Front cover Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Red/Black Figure), 1982, lot 151 (detail) © 2019 The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ ADAGP, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Inside front cover Andy Warhol, Map of Eastern U.S.S.R. Missile Bases (pos), 19851986, lot 155 (detail) © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Jean Dubufet, Barbe des bourreaux de Paris, 1959, lot 107 (detail) © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris Joan Miró, Torse de femme, 1967, lot 114 © 2019 Successió Miró/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Standing Male Figure), 1982-1983, lot 152 (detail) © 2019 The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/ADAGP, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Pablo Picasso, Femme en buste (Marie-Thérèse), 1939, lot 149 (detail) © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Agnes Martin, Untitled, 1995, lot 143 © 2019 Estate of Agnes Martin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Richard Serra, Track 31, 2007, lot 169 (detail) © 2019 Richard Serra/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Atsuko Tanaka, 85-E, 1985, lot 198 (detail) © The Estate of Atsuko Tanaka, Courtesy the Estate and Hauser & Wirth Ed Ruscha, Etc., 1990, lot 142 (detail) © Ed Ruscha Carmen Herrera, Untitled, 2013, lot 144 (detail) © Carmen Herrera Fernando Botero, Mother and Child, 2003, lot 180 (detail) © Fernando Botero Andy Warhol, Brillo Soap Pads Box, 1964, lot 159 (detail) © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Bernar Venet, Two Indeterminate Lines, 2006, lot 168 © 2019 Bernar Venet/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris Mario Merz, Una lunghissima domenica, 1988, lot 183 (detail) © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome Dan Flavin, untitled (to Bob and Pat Rohm), 1969, lot 162 (detail) © 2019 Estate of Dan Flavin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Jean Dubufet spread © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris Inside back cover Fernando Botero, Horse, 2012, lot 179 (detail) © Fernando Botero Back cover Roy Lichtenstein, Purist Painting with Dice, 1975, lot 158 © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
Art. Design. Hong Kong. 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Evening & Day Sales Hong Kong, 26 May 2019 JW Marriott Hong Kong Enquiries Charlotte Raybaud charlotteraybaud@phillips.com
KAWS BORN TO BEND painted bronze sculpture 41.9 x 27.3 cm. (16 1/2 x 10 3/4 in.) Executed in 2013 Estimate : HKD 800,000 - 1,200,000 To be ofered in our Day Sale
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Sports. Watches. Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Watch Auction: EIGHT 28 May 12pm HKT Viewing 23-27 May JW Marriott Hong Kong 88 Queensway, Admiralty Enquiries Thomas Perazzi Head of Watches, Asia thomasperazzi@phillips.com
Rolex, ref. 6538. An incredibly rare and highly attractive stainless steel wristwatch with sweep center seconds, black lacquer “four liner” dial, big crown and big logo bracelet, made in 1958. Estimate HK $3,200,000 - 6,200,000
phillips.com/watches Auctioneers since 1796.
Groundbreaking partnership. Exciting moments. Sports Watches Sale. Phillips & Blackbird: SPORTS 27 May 6:30pm HKT
Index Albers, J. 117 Basquiat, J.-M. 151-154
Gilliam, S. 200, 228, 229
Rauschenberg, R. 125, 156
Goldberg, M. 230
Resnick, M. 233
Graham, R. 131
Rojas, C. 238 Rothenberg, S. 215
Bearden, R. 201 Bermúdez, C. 236
Herrera, C. 144
Ruscha, E. 142
Botero, F. 177-180
Hofmann, H. 121, 194
Ryman, R. 171
Bowling, F. 218, 219 Kaufman, C. 164
Sakai, K. 217
Caldas, W. 234
Kelly, E. 145
Sandback, F. 163
Calder, A. 138, 139, 188
Kline, F. 120, 193
Segal, G. 133
Cannella, P. P. 181
Kounellis, J. 184
Serra, R. 128, 169, 170
Chamberlain, J. 126, 161, 211, 212
Kusama, Y. 146
Shimamoto, S. 199 Smith, D. 196
Christo 130, 209, 210 Clark, E. 140
Leslie, A. 231
Soldevilla, L. 174
Cornell, J. 113
LeWitt, S. 172, 223-225
Soto, J. R. 173
Coronel, P. 235
Lichtenstein, R. 158
Steinberg, S. 202 Stella, F. 132, 136, 137
Cruz-Diez, C. 165, 191 Martin, A. 143 Dadamaino 175
Matta, R. 135
Takamatsu, J. 141
Darié, S. 197
Mehring, H. 226
Tanaka, A. 198
de Kooning, W. 123, 124, 195
Merz, M. 183
Terrazas, E. 216
Dine, J. 122
Miró, J. 114, 115, 148
Tobey, M. 187
Downing, T. 227
Morales, A. 185
Toledo, F. 186
Dubufet, J. 101-112, 116, 134
Motherwell, R. 221 Mukai, S. 239
Estes, R. 203
Valdés, M. 176 Venet, B. 168
Ernst, M. 189 Nagel, P. 208 Nevelson, L. 129, 147, 240
Warhol, A. 155, 159, 160, 213, 214
Fabelo, R. 237
Nieto, R. 190
Wesley, J. 157
Flavin, D. 162
Noland, K. 166, 167, 220
Wesselmann, T. 118, 205-207
Fontana, L. 182 Francis, S. 119, 232
Oldenburg, C. 127
Frankenthaler, H. 192 Pearlstein, P. 204 Pettibone, R. 222 Picasso, P. 149, 150
142. Ed Ruscha
144. Carmen Herrera
180. 00. Fernando artist Botero
159. Andy Warhol
168. Bernar Venet
183. Mario Merz
162. Dan Flavin
179. Fernando Botero
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