20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session New York, 13 November 2019, 10am
Robert Motherwell’s Open No. 116: La France Open in a previous state in the artist’s studio, circa 1984. Photo by Peter Vitale. Artwork © 2019 Dedalus Foundation, Inc./Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
156. Robert Motherwell
110. Lucio Fontana
167. Gerhard Richter
124. Andy Warhol
103. Ed Ruscha
133. Paul Klee
20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale Morning Session New York, 13 November 2019, 10am
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Property from an Important Private Collection, Florida
101. Dorothea Rockburne
b. 1932
Oxymoron signed, titled and dated “OXYMORON Rockburne 87/88” on the stretcher oil on gessoed linen 51 7/8 x 49 3/8 x 7 in. (131.8 x 125.4 x 17.8 cm.) Executed in 1987-1988. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance André Emmerich Gallery, New York Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1988) Thence by descent to the present owner Exhibited New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Dorothea Rockburne, New Paintings: Pascal and Other Concerns, March 5 - April 2, 1988 Southhampton, Parrish Art Museum; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Dorothea Rockburne: In My Mind’s Eye, June 19, 2011 - January 29, 2012, no. 20, p. 158 (illustrated, p. 84) Literature Richard B. Woodward, “Too Restless for the Rules”, The Wall Street Journal, August 2, 2011, online “Dorothea Rockburne with David Levi Strauss and Christopher Bamford”, The Brooklyn Rail, July - August 2011, online John Pohl, “Math Morphs Seamlessly into Art”, Montreal Gazette, December 24, 2011, p. F1 (illustrated)
102. Yayoi Kusama
b. 1929
Sun Green signed “KUSAMA” lower right; further signed, titled and dated “Yayoi Kusama 1957 Sun Green” on the reverse acrylic and pastel on paper 15 3/4 x 13 1/8 in. (40 x 33.3 cm.) Executed in 1957, this work is accompanied by a registration card issued by YAYOI KUSAMA Inc. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance D’Amelio Terras, New York Private Collection (acquired from the above in May 1998) Sotheby’s, New York, March 2, 2017, lot 69 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
103. Ed Ruscha
b. 1937
Words #2 signed and dated “Ed Ruscha 1985” lower right; titled “WORDS #2” on the reverse dry pigment on paper 23 x 29 1/8 in. (58.5 x 73.9 cm.) Executed in 1985. Estimate $180,000-250,000 Provenance Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Lake Worth, Lannan Museum, Edward Ruscha: Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go, 1988, no. 3, pl. 37, pp. 19, 61, 111 (illustrated, pp. 18, 82) Literature Lisa Turvey, ed., Edward Ruscha, Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper, Volume 2: 1977 – 1997, New York, 2018, D1985.34, p. 214 (illustrated)
Inspired by the text-based works of fellow Pop artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha pursued a lifelong artistic exploration of the formal elements of printed text and its fuid relationship to the visual image. By culling words, images and phrases imprinted in his memory and found in mass media, such as print culture, advertising billboards, his work ofen serves as a visual encyclopedia of American culture. The artist has said, “Some [words] are found, ready-made, some are dreams, some come from newspapers. They are fnished by blind faith. No matter if I’ve seen it on television or read it in the newspaper, my mind seems to wrap itself around that thing until it’s done” (Ed Ruscha, quoted in “Premeditated: An Interview with Ed Ruscha”, Real Life Magazine, Summer 1985). In the case of the present work, Ruscha gleaned his text from the master of the written word, William Shakespeare. Words #2 represents Ruscha’s frst visual draf related to what would be his great mural installation at the downtown Miami-Dade Public
Library. The artist felt this poetic line should foat along the high circular rotunda of the library, almost like the great frescoes seen in places of worship. In order to read the entire quote, the viewer must gaze up and pivot in a full circle to read the fnal word “GO”, which almost prompts the viewer to return to the beginning and start reading again. In the present work, the line “Words Without Thoughts Never To Heaven Go” foats atop a cloudy light-blue sky. The words, decreasing in size, are centrally stabilized by a vertical stick which holds them in place so they don’t foat of with the clouds. The quote and heavenly scene touch upon Ruscha’s early upbringing as a Catholic. Shakespeare, too, is known to have referenced Catholicism. “Words Without Thoughts Never To Heaven Go” are muttered by Claudius while he is trying to pray, unaware that Hamlet has been watching him in order to kill him. Hamlet does not proceed, because according to Elizabethan belief, a person killed while praying and confessing sin “would directly to heaven go”. As Ruscha explains, “In Act III, Scene III of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the King utters, ‘Words without thoughts never to heaven go.’ This noble quotation is as timeless as it is poetic. It is a quotation that is profound and yet simple. For me, it burns with curiosity” (Ed Ruscha, A Proposal by Edward Ruscha for the Circular Ring and for the Lunettes of the New Miami – Dade Public Library, online).
Ed Ruscha, Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go, 1985. Miami-Dade Public Library, Artwork © Ed Ruscha
104. Sam Gilliam
b. 1933
Blue signed, titled and dated “Blue 1970 Sam Gilliam” on the reverse acrylic on unstretched, shaped canvas installation dimensions variable fat 65 x 69 in. (165.1 x 175.3 cm.) Executed in 1970. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Thence by descent to the present owner
Sam Gilliam has consistently pushed the possibilities of painting and upended the hierarchy of medium on fat (rectangular) substrate to encompass more minimal, and more maximal, modes of expression. Perhaps seemingly incongruous at frst glance, the arc of his oeuvre is best understood as a means by which Gilliam has explored how to make a painting which exists in more ways than simply plain paint on canvas – and afer his encounter with Kenneth Noland also to exist at once purely as a painting and also as a sculpture. Blue from the seminal period of 1970 is a superb example of Gilliam’s creative power – a shaped canvas, but without the support of a stretcher, fully imbued with coloration that serves both as medium and message. By 1970, Gilliam had abandoned the hard-edged abstraction which had frst garnered critical acclaim; gone beyond his Beveled paintings which served to solidly establish his interest in the sculptural nature of painting; and had arrived at the idea of the drape painting which perfectly embodied all that he was attempting to accomplish in his work. The performative nature of his style of minimalism and the manner in which these pieces fll the room, bring a wonderful maximalist quality to the work, and do so in an elegantly
“And what really shocked me is that I had never thought about sculpture at all. . . the interesting thing is that, since that point. . . I haven’t forgotten it. And that’s what led to the draped paintings; I mean, trying to produce a work that was about both painting and sculpture.” Sam Gilliam
simple manner. Blue exists as a star-shaped canvas permeated with a rich chromatic array ranging from periwinkle blue to coral pink, intense vermilion and sof sunny yellow. The all-over composition is enveloping and defes a singular focal point. Unlike a drape which hangs from the ceiling, Blue is mounted to the wall and with its irregular cut-outs and rough edges self-evidences its creation by Gilliam’s hands. Whereas the fowing quality of the color defes, even denies, the artist’s hand, the physical, sculptural, nature of the composition reinvests the work with the artist’s presence. In the course of his over six-decade long career there has been perhaps only one other artist to so radically explore the nature of the medium in the same fashion as Gilliam. Frank Stella’s own evolution from hardedged abstractionist to maximalist sculptor may seem as incongruous as Gilliam’s until one understands and acknowledges the common thread driving the practice. Gilliam, like Stella, was never satisfed to churn out repetitive works of the same nature, instead developing and exploring all of the various avenues on which his creative energies would alight. Blue, in its visual beauty, structural intrigue, and overall impressions perfectly encapsulates the best aspects of Gilliam’s practice.
Property from an Italian Private Family Collection
105. Max Ernst
1891-1976
Personnage signed “max Ernst” lower right oil on canvas 25 5/8 x 21 1/4 in. (65 x 54 cm.) Painted circa 1956. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Galleria Alexander Iolas, Milan Galleria Levi, Milan Acquired from the above by the present owners in the early 1970s Literature Werner Spies, ed., Max Ernst, Oeuvre-Katalog, Werke 1954-1963, Houston, 1998, no. 3209, p. 85 (illustrated)
In 1954, Max Ernst was awarded the grand prize for painting at the Venice Biennale, marking a triumphant return for this pioneer of Dada and Surrealism. Having fed to the United States afer the outbreak of World War II, Ernst had worked in isolation from the larger art world. His return to Paris in 1953 marked a turning point in both his life and career as he reconnected with collectors and dealers, and his work fnally began receiving long-overdue critical recognition and wider appreciation. While the movements of Art Informel and geometric art were taking the European art world by storm, Ernst continued on his own artistic path with steadfast conviction. Painted circa 1956, Personnage is a quintessential example from this seminal period and perfectly encapsulates how Ernst developed his practice against the background of his earlier oeuvre. A luminous, otherworldly fgure emerges from darkness in this composition, one that beautifully reprises the iconography and techniques that Ernst pioneered in such series as Histoire Naturelle, 1925. Embracing chance and Surrealist automatism in his experimental practice, in the 1920s Ernst invented the analogous techniques of frottage and grattage. The former technique consisted of making pencil rubbings of objects and materials such as foorboards, twine, wire mesh, crumpled paper or bread crusts, while
the latter involved scraping paint across the canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. Personnage demonstrates pictorial elements that, as Werner Spies’s most recent research has revealed, can be traced back to two ink collages that Ernst created in 1949 and 1950 and upon which he had printing plates made. Ernst would place these printing plates below the canvas to make a rubbing of the image, using one to create the right side of the fgure’s head in the present work, and using the second multiple times in diferent orientations to build up the upper part of its body as he scraped oil paint across the surface. Covering the resulting kaleidoscope of line and color with thick black paint, Ernst harnesses the power of negative space to create form. As Werner Spies observed of works such as the present example, “Themes from the twenties and thirties – forests, hordes, astral motifs – are taken up again. In most cases the artist is content with laconic, simplifed versions, but on a closer inspection it is evident that the empty areas in the pictures are activated with mesh, networks, scars, in short a great variety of tiny structures. The threedimensional illusion…keeps the eye in constant motion” (Werner Spies, ed., Max Ernst, Oeuvre-Katalog, Werke 1954 -1963, Houston, 1998, p. X).
Wifredo Lam
A Return to Havana
A complex artist whose oeuvre spanned the defning art movements of the 20th century, Wifredo Lam’s paintings capture the essence of the 20th Century, harnessing the trauma of the Spanish Civil War, in which he was drafed to defend Madrid, World War II, and the Cuban Revolution, yet always maintaining a longing for beauty. Striving to convey a soulful message that spoke of freedom in a time of high political and social drama, Lam endowed his works with powerful psychological tension. Born in Cuba to parents of Chinese, Spanish, and African descent, Lam started his art studies in Havana in 1918. In 1923, he traveled to Madrid to train under the conservative academic painter Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor, Director of the Museo del Prado. At the Prado, Lam had the frst opportunity to study works by Diego Velázquez, El Greco, Francisco de Goya, Hieronymus Bosch and Peter Bruegel the Elder. Also in 1929, while still working in Madrid, he had the chance to see for the frst time paintings by Juan Gris and Pablo Picasso. Lam lef Spain as a refugee in 1938, near the end of the Spanish Civil War. He traveled to Paris where he had his frst crucial encounter with Picasso. Lam met the artist in his Paris studio on the Rue des Grands-Augustins, and the two felt an instant connection. Picasso told Lam, who was 21 years his junior, “You remind me of someone that I knew many years ago...me.” Lam would say of the meeting, “Picasso may easily have been present in my spirit, for nothing in him was alien or strange to me” (Wifredo Lam, quoted in Elizabeth Goizueta, Wifredo Lam: Imagining New Worlds, Boston, 2014, p. 13). Some months later Lam would hesitantly unveil some of his works to Picasso and the Parisian gallerist Pierre Loeb, who instantly decided
to support the young artist. He worked incessantly for the next two years, producing over 150 paintings, and had his frst Paris exhibition at Galerie Pierre Loeb in the summer of 1939, followed by an exhibition at the Perls Gallery in New York from November 13 to December 3, 1939, where his gouaches were exhibited alongside Picasso’s drawings. As World War II escalated, Lam embarked on a long journey back to Cuba enriched with encounters and collaborations that would inform and enrich the work he produced upon his arrival in 1942. On his way to the Antilles, in Marseille, he worked closely with André Breton illustrating his famous poem Fata Morgana, and deepening his ties to the Surrealist movement. He was joined in his journey across the Atlantic by other artists including André Breton, Victor Serge, and Anna Seghers, as well as the anthropologist Claude LéviStrauss, a scholar of myth and comparative religion. “Throughout this interminable voyage,” recalled Lévi-Strauss, “we passed the time discussing the relationship between aesthetic beauty and absolute originality” (Claude Lévi-Strauss quoted in Elizabeth GoizuetaWifredo Lam: Imagining New Worlds, exh. cat., McMullen Museum of Art, Boston, 2014, p. 14). In Martinique, Lam met the poet Aimé Césaire, considered the founder of the anticolonial Négritude movement that stressed black pride and the beauty of African cultures. This encounter would have a deep impact not only on the painter but also on the poet, marking the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Upon his arrival in 1942, Lam approached the Cuban environment with a drastically diferent perspective. Lam decided to paint what he considered to be the authentic Cuban culture, rather than romanticizing the idea of idyllic life in the tropics. Executed in this
The Warrior (Personnage avec lézard), 1947, lot 106, on view at Pierre Matisse Gallery, Spring 1948. Pierre Matisse Gallery Archives, Artwork © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
seminal year, Deux personnages perfectly encapsulates this shif in his depiction of two women. Rendered in masterfully gestural charcoal and a subtle tempera wash of light cerulean, Lam situates the two fgures within an ambiguous setting that is both domestic and wildly tropical. Refective of the artist’s excavation of Cuba’s African roots, Deux personnages depicts fgures that are simultaneously human, animal, and vegetal, evocative of gods and deities. “I decided that my painting would never be the equivalent of that pseudo-Cuban music for nightclubs. I refused to paint cha-cha-cha,” Lam explained. “I wanted with all my heart to paint the drama of my country, but by thoroughly expressing the Negro spirit, the beauty of the plastic art of the blacks. In this way I could act as a Trojan horse that would spew forth hallucinating fgures with the power to surprise,
to disturb the dreams of the exploiters” (Max-Pol Fouchet, Wifredo Lam, Barcelona, 1976, pp. 188-189). Guided by the knowledge that he had gained in Spain and France, and the invaluable experience shared on his trip back to Cuba, the works he created during his 8-year stay on the island constituted a signifcant body of work that launched a newly singular, mature, and enigmatic artist. The Warrior (Personnage avec lézard) belongs to the important body of work that the artist produced between 1942-1950, and which would come to defne his oeuvre. In the painting, the artist utilizes distinctive Afro-Cuban symbolism, creating an atmosphere in which the human and the animal mix. Lam depicts a world of primitive myths, composed of fgures with long arms and necks, spikey hands, well-formed eyes, mouths and horns, all evoking a haunting presence in the limited earthen palette of black and cream.
106. Wifredo Lam
1902-1982
The Warrior (Personnage avec lézard) oil on burlap 28 3/8 x 32 1/2 in. (72.1 x 82.6 cm.) Painted in 1947. Estimate $300,000-500,000 Provenance Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York Studio Bellini, Milan Private Collection, Milan Christie’s, New York, November 20, 2002, lot 22 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Wifredo Lam, April 20 - May 8, 1948 San Francisco Museum of Art, New Directions in Modern Painting, August 1 – September 17, 1950, no. 14 Milan, Studio Bellini, Panorama 6, November December 1969, n.p. (illustrated) New York, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Wifredo Lam and his Contemporaries 1938 - 1952, December 1992 April 1993, p. 43 (installation view illustrated) Literature Pierre Mabille, “The Ritual Painting of Wifredo Lam”, Magazine of Art, vol. 42, no. 5, May 1949, p. 188 (illustrated) Michel Leiris, Wifredo Lam, Milan, 1970, no. 83, p. 35 (illustrated, n.p.; titled as Figura) Max-Pol Fouchet, Wifredo Lam, Barcelona, 1976, no. 83, p. 225 (illustrated, p. 76; titled as Character with Lizard) Max-Pol Fouchet, Wifredo Lam, Paris, 1989, no. 83, p. 274 (illustrated, p. 80) Lou Laurin-Lam, Wifredo Lam, Catalogue Raisonné of the Painted Work, Volume I, 1923 - 1960, Lausanne, 1996, no. 47.51, p. 404 (illustrated)
Property from an Italian Private Family Collection
107. Wifredo Lam
1902-1982
Deux personnages signed and dated “Wifredo Lam 1-8-42” lower right charcoal and tempera on paper 40 x 30 1/8 in. (101.7 x 76.4 cm.) Executed in 1942. Estimate $180,000-250,000 Provenance Fischbach Gallery, New York Galerie Beyeler, Basel Studio Bellini, Milan Acquired from the above by the present owners in the late 1970s Literature Surrealismo, exh. cat., Levi Arte Moderna, Milan, 1974, no. 52, n.p. (illustrated) Max-Pol Fouchet, Wifredo Lam, Barcelona, 1976, no. 340, p. 257 (illustrated, p. 230) Max-Pol Fouchet, Wifredo Lam, Barcelona, 1989, no. 372, p. 277 (illustrated, p. 250) Lou Laurin-Lam, Wifredo Lam: Catalogue Raisonné of the Painted Work, Volume 1, 1923-1960, Lausanne, 1996, no. 42.98, p. 317 (illustrated)
Amelia Peláez
Pioneer of Modern Cuban Painting
One of the key pioneers of modern art in Cuba, Amelia Peláez was well ahead of her time. Trailblazing and brazenly independent, she forged a unique path as a painter – garnering critical acclaim in New York and Paris early in her career, yet for the most part working in relative obscurity in Havana. While championed by notable art world fgures such as Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Peláez’s oeuvre has only recently received its long overdue recognition. Painted in 1930 and 1964, respectively, Flores and Piña capture the artist’s remarkable practice. As early as 1943, Peláez was included in The Museum of Modern Art’s growing Latin American art collection – her work notably gracing the front cover of the publication accompanying the 1944 exhibition Modern Cuban Painting. Not only was Peláez celebrated as one of the foremost Cuban painters, she notably was the only female artist included in this landmark show that introduced the new tendencies in art from Cuba to the New York art world. As Alfred H. Barr, Jr. wrote, “Modern Cuban painting…has something of the brashness, but even more the virtues of youth — courage, freshness, vitality, and a healthy disrespect for its elders in a country which is very old in tradition and very new in independence” (Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Modern Cuban Painting, Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, April 1944, vol. XI, no. 5, p. 1). Alongside artists such as Wifredo Lam and Carlos Enríquez, Peláez belonged to the so-called “primera vanguardia,” referring to the frst wave of Cuban artists who traveled abroad before World War II. Born in 1896 during Cuba’s fnal liberation war against Spain, Peláez studied painting in Havana before studying at the Arts Student League in New York in 1924, and then moving to Paris in 1927. She notably enrolled in Fernand Léger’s
Académie Moderne where she studied under Alexandra Exter – a painter who would not only introduce Peláez to modernism, but importantly had a strong impact on her sense of self as a professional female artist. Exposed to Cubism and Surrealism, Peláez developed a highly distinct painterly style, and garnered critical recognition which led to her frst solo show in Paris at the Galerie ZAK in 1933. Flores, 1930, was notably one of the paintings included in this celebrated exhibition. An important early painting by Peláez, Flores perfectly encapsulates the idiom she developed in Paris at the cusp of her international success. It was in the wake of her success in Paris that Peláez returned to Cuba in 1934 and became a vital member of the Cuban avant-garde movement (“the vanguardia”). At a time of economic and political uncertainty, the vanguardia tapped into the notion of nationalism through their modern art: taking the innovations they learnt in Europe as a formal point of departure, they incorporated aspects from their native culture to create a uniquely “Cuban” style of modern painting. Painted in 1964, just four years before Peláez’s death, Piña vividly exemplifes the signature idiom she developed in Cuba. While embracing a progressive stylistic approach, Peláez focused on the colonial past of Cuba – specifcally zooming in on the domestic experience. Her brightly colored, quasi-abstraction compositions merge decorative objects and ornamental motifs, evoking a cultural heritage that was slowly being lost at a time of rapid modernization in the frst half of the 20th century. Exploring notions of heritage but also the transformation of societal roles, Peláez’s work addresses the tensions between tradition and modernity, past and present, in a powerful way that continues to resonate in today’s day and age.
Ida Kar, Amelia Pelåez Del Casal, 1964. National Portrait Gallery, London, Image Š National Portrait Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY
108. Amelia Peláez
1896-1968
Piña signed and dated “A. Peláez 64” right center edge oil on canvas 36 1/4 x 22 1/4 in. (92 x 56.5 cm.) Painted in 1964. Estimate $180,000-250,000 Provenance Dolores Smithies, New York Christie’s, New York, November 17, 2004, lot 23 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
109. Amelia Peláez
1896-1968
Flores signed “A. Peláez” upper right oil on canvas 31 1/2 x 22 1/2 in. (80 x 57.2 cm.) Painted in 1930. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Galerie ZAK, Paris Ramón Cernuda and Nercys Ganem, Miami Christie’s, New York, November 23, 1993, lot 59 Private Collection Christie’s, New York, November 21, 2002, lot 79 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Paris, Galerie ZAK, Amelia Peláez del Casal, April 28 - May 12, 1933 Miami, InterAmerican Art Gallery, Miami-Dade Community College, Twentieth Century Cuban Art from the Collection of Ramón Cernuda & Nercys Ganem, February 5 - March 30, 1988, no. 32, p. 28 Miami, The Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture, Amelia Peláez, 1896-1968: A Retrospective, Una Retrospectiva, July 15 - August 15, 1988, no. 7, p. 106 (illustrated, p. 31)
110. Lucio Fontana
1899-1968
Concetto spaziale signed “l. fontana” lower right; further signed and titled “l. fontana “Conzetto Spaziale”” on the reverse oil on canvas 21 5/8 x 18 1/8 in. (55 x 46 cm.) Executed in 1964. Estimate $400,000-600,000 Provenance Galerie Burén, Stockholm Private Collection, Malmö Sotheby’s, London, December 5, 1985, lot 310 Gallery Art Point, Tokyo Private Collection, Tokyo (acquired from the above) Exhibited Tokyo, Tama Art University Museum, Lucio Fontana, Spatial Conception, 1990, no. 62, p. 66 (illustrated) Tokyo, Mitsukoshi Museum of Art; Museo Municipale d’Arte di Kagoshima; Nishinomiya, Museo d’Arte Otani, Lucio Fontana, La penetrazione dello spazio, April 4 - November 23, 1992, no. 27, p. 66 (illustrated) Literature Enrico Crispolti, Fontana Catalogo Generale, Volume secondo, Milan, 1986, no. 64 O 20, p. 484 (illustrated) Enrico Crispolti, Lucio Fontana, Catalogo ragionato di sculture, di pinti, ambientazioni, Tomo II, Milan, 2006, no. 64 O 20, p. 678 (illustrated)
Lucio Fontana Concetto spaziale, 1964
Created at the height of Lucio Fontana’s groundbreaking career, Concetto spaziale, 1964, viscerally confronts the viewer with one of the most iconic and iconoclastic gestures of post-war art. Gouging and clawing into the canvas, Fontana here introduces the void into the green picture plane – enlarging it with his own hands and building up the vibrant oil paint into sculptural impasto around the opening. A quintessential example of Fontana’s celebrated olii series, the present work vividly demonstrates how Fontana pushed the medium of painting into new conceptual pastures. It was in 1947, not long afer the frst photos of Earth taken from a rocket appeared around the world, that Fontana founded the movement of Spatialism in his quest for an art apt for the burgeoning space age. Repudiating the illusory space of traditional easel painting, Fontana embraced the creative force of destruction to unite color and form in real space. The violation of the pictorial plane was a profoundly conceptual act for Fontana, his radical gestures enforcing the idea of the painting as an object, and not solely as a surface. Fontana’s radical gesture of puncturing the canvas with buchi (“holes”) in 1949 ushered in a series of experiments that he collectively entitled Concetto spaziale (“spatial concept”). Fontana, who was a sculptor by training, pushed the central tenets of his buchi into the sculptural realm with his olii starting in 1957 – the introduction of oil paint into his practice allowing him to engage with the plastic nature of painting to a greater degree.
“The discovery of the cosmos opens up a new dimension, the Infnite, so I make a hole in the canvas, which was the basis of all the arts, and I have created an infnite dimension.” Lucio Fontana
In many ways, the olii represented the antithesis of the tagli (“cuts”) that Fontana had started in the mid 1950s. In contrast to the precise slashes rupturing fat, minimalist surfaces of his tagli, the olii present heavily built up, richly textured landscapes charged with a visceral energy heightened by Fontana’s deliberate choice of vibrant hues, ranging from bright greens, pinks and gold. “The cuts that I have made so far represent above all a philosophical space,” Fontana explained. “But that which I am seeking, now, is no longer philosophical space but rather physical space… It is a human dimension that can generate physiological pain, a terror in the mind, and I, in my most recent canvases, am trying to give form to this sensation” (Lucio Fontana, quoted in Grazia Livi, “Incontro con Lucio Fontana”, Vanita, no. 13, Autumn 1962, p. 55).
Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio, 1963. Private Collection, Photo © Luisa Ricciarini/ Bridgeman Images
Created three years afer Yuri Gagarin had become the frst man to view earth from space through the window of his Vostok 1 capsule in 1961, Concetto spaziale presents the viewer with a rich topography pulsating in saturated green. “The color of the grounds of these canvases is a bit loud,” Fontana explained, “[indicating] the restlessness of contemporary Man. The subtle tracing, on the other hand, is the walk of Man in space, his dismay and fear of getting lost…” (Lucio Fontana, quoted in Pia Gottschaller, Lucio Fontana: The Artist’s Materials, Los Angeles, 2002, p. 90). While the lines Fontana incised into the wet oil paint around the void echo Gagarin’s journey into the uncharted depths of the universe, the circular shape at the same time also suggests birth, regeneration and the cosmos - an association Fontana explored further in the egg-shaped canvases of his concurrent Concetto Spaziale, La fne di Dio series from 1963 and 1964. Concetto spaziale attests how Fontana radically probed the existential complexities of the modern age through the materiality of painting. Created in 1964 at a jubilant moment in Fontana’s career, it speaks to the remarkable vision of an artist who within just 15 years changed the course of art history forever.
Property from a Distinguished Private Collector
111. Dan Flavin
1933-1996
untitled (to Bob and Pat Rohm) red, yellow and green fuorescent light 48 x 48 x 4 in. (122 x 122 x 10.2 cm.) Executed in 1969-1970, this work is number 3 from an edition of 5, of which only 3 were fabricated, and is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity signed by the artist. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2000 Exhibited Munich, Galerie Heiner Friedrich, three nearsquare cornered installations from Dan Flavin, November 3 - 31, 1970 (another example exhibited) New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, In Three Dimensions, September 21 - October 12, 1974 (another example exhibited) Austin, Laguna Gloria Art Museum, drawn along the shores, 1959-1976 by Dan Flavin, November 17, 1979 - January 13, 1980 (another example exhibited) Los Angeles, Margo Leavin Gallery, Dan Flavin: spanning corners, June 14 - July 19, 1984 (another example exhibited) New York, Sean Kelly Gallery, Remarks on Color, June 1 - July 26, 2002 (another example exhibited) Literature Lazlo Glozer, “Quadrat im Lichthof”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 21, 1970, p. 9 (another example mentioned) “Der Galerie-Verein”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 10, 1979, p. 29 (another example illustrated with incorrect orientation) Corrina Thierolf, Amerikanische Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts in der Pinakothek der Moderne, Ostfldern-Ruit, 2002, p. 131 and back cover (another example illustrated) Michael Govan and Tifany Bell, Dan Flavin: The Complete Lights 1961-1996, New York, 2004, no. 229, p. 285 (another example illustrated)
Few artists have defned a particular medium as Dan Flavin, whose pioneering work from the early 1960s until his death in 1996 almost entirely consisted of light in the form of commercially available fuorescent tubes. untitled (to Bob and Pat Rohm), 1969-1970, is an important early work that perfectly encapsulates Flavin’s groundbreaking innovations. Dedicated to Flavin’s friends Bob Rohm, an artist, and his wife Pat Rohm, the present work is the sister work to the 8-foot version that Flavin created the year prior. It is testimony to the signifcance of the series that Flavin gifed an edition of the frst example to his close friend and fellow artist Donald Judd. More housable than the frst iteration, the present work consists of a 4-foot window-like structure that hovers mid-air within a corner – drawing the viewer into a sufused space of pure light and color. While Flavin conceived of this work in an edition of fve, only three were fabricated, with one edition notably residing in the collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. untitled (to Bob and Pat Rohm) was created six years afer Flavin achieved his artistic breakthrough of employing the industrial readymade to create installations of light and color, or “situations,” as he preferred to call them. Striving to strip art from its reliance on illusionism, allegory, and narrative, and reduce it to its most essential form, Flavin conceived of the groundbreaking idea to make sculptures incorporating electric light in 1960. 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 re-fused to attach any symbolic or narrative signifcance to his work. In this he was importantly joined by his close friend Donald Judd, 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 19611996, New York, 2004, p. 255). It has two yellow and green vertical 4-foot lamps on each side that face into the corner, and two horizontal red 4-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. Drawing the viewer in with its sufused fuorescent glow that shimmers in red, green and yellow, untitled (to Bob and Pat Rohm) beautifully epitomizes Flavin’s pioneering phenomenological investigation of color and light that would forever alter the course of art making.
Property from a Private Collector, Florida
112. Mary Corse
b. 1945
Untitled (Black White Inner Band, Beveled) signed and dated “Mary Corse 2006” on the reverse glass microspheres and acrylic on canvas 84 x 84 in. (213.4 x 213.4 cm.) Executed in 2006. Estimate $220,000-280,000 Provenance ACE Gallery, Los Angeles Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2014
“And so I went back, after the light pieces, to the paintings with the micro-glass spheres, the highway safety spheres, which put the light in the painting, and put it in your perception—because as you move, it changes—So, you realize that perception is creating the art.”
Exhibited Museum of Contemporary Art Buenos Aires, Obsesión Geométrica. American School 1965 - 2015, October 17, 2015 - March 13, 2016, p. 187 (illustrated, p. 164)
Mary Corse
Untitled (Black White Inner Band, Beveled), 2006, synthesizes decades of Mary Corse’s pioneering Light and Space research into a perfectly balanced composition. In Untitled (Black White Inner Band, Beveled), what at frst glance appears to be a minimalist composition of white and black stripes reveals itself to be a constantly changing feld of pure light, varying in intensity with fuctuations in the work’s illumination and the viewer’s position. It is the central band of white acrylic and refective glass microspheres that here achieves Corse’s signature goal of imbuing painting with light, the luminous efect of its materials balanced by the two bold black stripes on either end. While the outer white forms initially seem identical to the bold central column, they gradually reveal a perceptual diference as one moves around the work, with the viewer’s own moving shadow fusing with the luminous ground. Equally glowing and opaque in degrees ranging from subtle to stark, Untitled (Black White Inner Band, Beveled) is a stunning example of Corse’s investigation of perception that is currently subject to a major solo exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
in Los Angeles, Corse sought to incorporate light into her practice in the most objective way possible. While initially studying quantum physics to create her early series Light Paintings, Corse soon began to focus on the inherently subjective perception of scientifc phenomena. Her integration of industrial refective beads in her paintings was prompted by the epiphany of driving through Malibu and noticing how highway safety lines refected light in diferent intensities depending on how her own point of view shifed. Embedding this material within acrylic paint on the canvas, starting in 1968, allowed Corse to endow a painting with its own light, giving rise to her breakthrough series, White Light.
Corse created this work as part of her larger White Light Inner Band series from the early 2000s, which further expanded on her pioneering innovations of the 1960s. While Corse’s career has gained considerable recognition in recent years, her contributions to both the Light and Space and minimalist movements were generally overlooked until recent years. Based
In many ways, Untitled (Black White Inner Band, Beveled) also harkens back to Corse’s Black Earth series, which she began afer moving from downtown Los Angeles to Topanga Canyon in 1970s. The starkness of the black bands recall the enormous ceramic slabs she had molded on the rocks of the surrounding Malibu Mountains and covered in a rich black glaze. More specifcally, however, the present work continues Corse’s interest in rethinking composition and properties of light in her paintings. In this painting, the matte black bracketing the microsphere feld creates an oppositional force that is highlighted depending on the viewer’s position in relation to the work. Bringing together light and materiality in Untitled (Black White Inner Band, Beveled), Corse brilliantly explores the tension between perception and objective reality – putting forth a work that is as ever changing as the reality surrounding us.
A DISCER NING VISION Property from an Important Private Collection
Phillips is pleased to ofer an outstanding selection of over 50 post-war and contemporary works from an Important Private Collection across our 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening and Day Sales. Capturing the innovative temperament of the last 50 years of art history, this collection—meticulously amassed over 25 years— comprises many of the most highly regarded artists of today. The scope of artists, genres, and styles that the intrepid collectors subsequently brought together are broad and varied; the collection ranges from well-established names, such as Roy Lichtenstein and Cy Twombly, to previously underappreciated artists such as Martin Puryear and Vija Celmins, who are now enjoying recognition on a global stage and considered to be contemporary masters. It is a testament to the couple’s cultivated eye and collecting vision that a great number of the artists from the collection are having a conspicuous impact in the international art world, experiencing widespread exposure and—ofen overdue—critical acclaim. This selection refects the joined passion and vision of two collectors, who initially accumulated an impressive collection of Old Master paintings before bringing that same astute connoisseurship to post-war and contemporary art. With the majority of works acquired directly from galleries, the collection bears testimony to the deep and lasting relationships that the couple has cultivated over the years and the connections that they have continued to build as they began engaging, increasingly, with contemporary and emerging art. The act of careful looking and a love of learning have been at the core of this couple’s pursuit to build a cohesive collection of the pioneering art produced in their lifetimes. These works carefully acquired over the years convey their innate understanding of the historical trajectory of the modern art canon, as well as an insatiable curiosity in chronicling the art of their own time and place. While the works span media and continents, they capture the constant push and pull between fguration and abstraction that has structured much of the art discourse in the past half century. In the following
selection, this is perhaps best encapsulated by Philip Guston’s Untitled and Drawing for Cellar, two works that brilliantly trace the artist’s radical shif from abstraction to fguration. Among his New York contemporaries, Willem de Kooning – who proclaimed Guston’s radical move to fguration as a celebration of “freedom” and is represented in the collection with two exquisite drawings – was perhaps his closest ally. Both shared an interest in moving beyond the purported purity of abstract painting, as espoused by Clement Greenberg. Twombly’s Untitled from 1962 speaks of a similar blurring of notions of fguration and abstraction, his poetic composition oscillating between a mythic landscape and the pure gesture of his distinctive mark-making. Spanning over three decades, Gerhard Richter’s Rot-Blau-Gelb, 1972, and Quattro Colori, 2008, exemplify how the artist pushed the discourse of abstraction to new conceptual heights. Simultaneously, this particular grouping of works speaks of the collectors’ deep appreciation of the hand of the artist and mark-making; the exquisite group of works on paper by Willem de Kooning, Cy Twombly, Brice Marden and Ed Ruscha brim with an immediacy that ofer unique insights into the artist’s working method. While threads of infuence begin to reveal themselves in this collection, this superb group of works also refects the insatiable curiosity of two collectors who added such outstanding works as a sculptural still life by Yayoi Kusama from 1968 to their collection. While spanning a diverse range of media and styles, the following works are all linked by their creators’ relentless expansion of art historical conventions. Spanning North America and Europe, these artists may have taken very divergent paths, but all have used their work to challenge or subvert the canon in their own unique ways. It is rare to encounter a private collection of such quality that is also diverse, yet that so clearly articulates the passion and vision of the collectors. A combination of exceptional taste and a forward-thinking approach has resulted in a collection so impressive that it can be said to capture the revolutionary spirit of the last half-century.
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113. Yayoi Kusama
b. 1929
Untitled signed and dated “YAYOI KUSAMA 1968” on labels afxed to the underside of the casserole pan and pot spray paint on sewn stufed fabric and found objects mug 3 3/4 x 4 1/2 x 2 7/8 in. (9.5 x 11.4 x 7.6 cm.) pot 3 5/8 x 12 3/8 x 9 1/2 in. (9.2 x 31.5 x 24.1 cm.) casserole pan 3 1/4 x 12 3/8 x 9 1/2 in. (8.4 x 31.5 x 24 cm.) spoon 1 7/8 x 7 x 2 3/8 in. (5 x 17.9 x 6 cm.) installation dimensions variable Executed in 1968, this work will be accompanied by a registration card issued by YAYOI KUSAMA Inc. Estimate $120,000-180,000 Provenance Private Collection, New Jersey Peter Blum Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2005
Detail of the present work
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114. Ed Ruscha
b. 1937
Two Sheets with Whisky Stains signed and dated “Edward Ruscha 1973” lower lef gunpowder and Scotch whisky on paper 14 1/2 x 22 7/8 in. (36.9 x 58.4 cm.) Executed in 1973. Estimate $280,000-350,000 Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Galerie Françoise Lambert, Milan Gino Di Maggio, Milan Sotheby’s, London, June 26, 2003, lot 133 Gagosian Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Lisa Turvey, ed., Edward Ruscha, Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper, Volume One: 1956-1976, New York, 2014, no. D1973.24, p. 333 (illustrated)
Executed in 1973, Ed Ruscha’s Two Sheets with Whisky Stains belongs to a series of roughly three dozen works on paper made between 1971 and 1973 in gunpowder. Each illustrating blank, suspended sheets of paper as if ripped and dropped from a sketchbook, the work’s titles are so named afer their subject and a material used to “stain” the paper, whether foodstufs, chemicals or fuids. Two Sheets with Whisky Stains depicts two sheets of paper lightly stained with Scotch whisky atop a background of gray rendered in gunpowder, dark shadows cast beneath them. The resulting image possesses a trompe l’oeil efect; as if airbrushed, the surface is so precise one could almost grab the stained sheets from the two-dimensional surface.
Of his use of gunpowder, Ruscha said, “I soaked some gunpowder in water once and I saw it separated all the salt out of it. I just did it as an experiment…I could see it would make a good choice of materials; it could actually impregnate on paper. You could use it almost like charcoal…Graphite was much more laborious, but it has a diferent feel altogether...So gunpowder was simple, it was easy to get going” (Ed Ruscha, quoted in Alexandra Schwartz, ed., Leave Any Information at the Signal, Writings, Interviews, Bits, Pages, Cambridge, 2002, pp. 155-156). Adding substances ranging from alcohol to the oil from fruits and spices, Ruscha continued these experimentations in unconventional mediums with the sheet drawings. Following his ribbon text works of 1966-1971, these works would “advance the representational riddle of the ribbon drawings: a sheet of paper is pictured illusionistically on a paper ground via the subtractive process of masking out, so the object fgured as three-dimensional is actually the fattest and least worked area of the support. Paper and stain, both, are simultaneously real and represented; the stain, in penetrating the support and afrming its fatness, destroys the pretense of illusionism even as it comprises part of an illusionistic rendering” (Lisa Turvey, Edward Ruscha, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works on Paper, Volume One: 19561976, New York, 2014, p. 32). As such, works like Two Sheets with Whisky Stains are the frst self-referential pieces in Ruscha’s prolifc oeuvre, representing a pivotal shif from the literal to the conceptual.
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115. Gerhard Richter
b. 1932
Rot-Blau-Gelb signed, inscribed and dated “332/4 1972 Richter” on the reverse oil on canvas 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in. (100 x 100 cm.) Painted in 1972. Estimate $300,000-500,000 Provenance Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired directly from the artist) Galerie Löhrl, Mönchengladbach Private Collection (acquired from the above) Exhibited Zurich, Hauser & Wirth, Gerhard Richter, Bilder/ Paintings, 1964-1994, Sammlung Hauser & Wirth, October 28 - December 23, 1995, no. 14, n.p. (illustrated) Literature Dietmar Elger, ed., Gerhard Richter, Bilder/Paintings 1962 - 1985, Cologne, 1986, no. 332-3, p. 381 (illustrated, p. 155; incorrectly numbered) Gerhard Richter: Werkübersicht, Catalogue Raisonné, 1962 – 1993, Band III/Volume III, exh. cat., Kunst– und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 1993, no. 323-4, p. 51 (illustrated) Dietmar Elger, ed., Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné Nos. 198-388, Volume 2, 1968-1976, Berlin, 2017, no. 332-4, p. 482 (illustrated)
Gerhard Richter Rot-Blau-Gelb, 1972
Remaining in the same esteemed private collection for over 20 years, Gerhard Richter’s Rot-Blau-Gelb, 1972, beautifully exemplifes the artist’s burgeoning interest in color and exploration of gestural abstraction in the early 1970s. The three primary colors of red, blue and yellow here beautifully interweave into a sufused pictorial space enlivened by dynamic gestural brushstrokes. Painted in 1972, the same year that Richter represented Germany at the 36th Venice Biennale, this work belongs to the artist’s broader Vermalungen (Inpaintings) series, other examples of which reside in such major museums as the Museum Kunstpalast and the Kunstsammlung in Düsseldorf, and the Kunsthalle Bremen. Embracing a painstaking painterly process, in this body of work Richter would frst begin by covering the canvas with circular areas of red, blue and yellow color and then moving his brush across the wet surface – allowing the pigments to mix to stunning and varied efect. This almost mechanical process underlying Rot-Blau-Gelb importantly represented a radical breakthrough for Richter, one that would set the foundation for Richter’s acclaimed corpus of Abstrakte Bilder.
“The diferent hues and forms develop with the continual movement of the brush, bringing forth an elusive spatiality without my having to invent forms and signs: the brush moves along a given path from color spot to color spot, frst mediating, then more or less destroying, and mingling until there is nothing left untouched, until there is almost a hodgepodge, an equal expanse of interwoven form, space, and color.” Gerhard Richter
Alexander Archipenko, Pure Red Color, Pure Yellow Color and Pure Blue Color, 1921. Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova Archive, Moscow © 2019 Estate of Alexander Rodchenko/UPRAVIS, Moscow/Artists Rights Society, NY
Richter’s Rot-Blau-Gelb series speaks to a seminal development in the artist’s practice, one in which he embraced “the break in style as a stylistic principle” (Klaus Honnef, Gerhard Richter Paintings, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1988, p. 74). Having achieved critical acclaim for his photo paintings, in the mid-1960s Richter sought to expand his artistic approach by exploring the conceptual possibilities of painting. The years between 1968 and 1976 represented undoubtedly the most experimental and diverse period in Richter’s oeuvre. At the same time as he continued to create his photorealistic paintings, he also embarked upon his Farben (Color Charts), Graue Bilder (Gray Pictures) and the culminating Vermalungen series. As Dietmar Elger has put forward, together these series can be viewed as a conceptual unit, in which “Richter succeeded...in creating skillfully crafed, high-grade aesthetic paintings of the abstract and the undepictable” (Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter Catalogue Raisonné Nos. 198-388, Volume 2, 19681976, Berlin, 2017, p. 29). Based on photographic enlargements of brushstrokes, Richter’s Vermalungen encapsulates the poles of photorealism and abstraction so characteristic of Richter’s conceptual practice. While Richter initially painted in an exclusively gray palette, the present work speaks to Richter’s increasing interest in color that would culminate in the discrete Rot-Blau-Gelb series of 1972 and 1973. As Richter declared of this series, “The diferent hues and forms develop with the continual movement of the brush, bringing forth an elusive spatiality without my having to invent forms and signs:
the brush moves along a given path from color spot to color spot, frst mediating, then more or less destroying, and mingling until there is nothing lef untouched, until there is almost a hodgepodge, an equal expanse of interwoven form, space, and color” (Gerhard Richter, quoted Gerhard Richter Paintings, exh. cat., Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1988, p. 78). With an irreverent nod to the avant-garde’s idealization of primary colors, Richter provocatively allows them to mingle as an act of defance against any ideology. Drawn to chance procedures and the randomness of gesture, Richter’s abstract compositions brilliantly challenge the possibilities and optical limits of color – freeing them from any representative or symbolic function. As Michael Hübl describes, “But the colorful and lively canvases that Richter began in the mid 70s ofer completely new views of the nonobjective world… at times…it seems as if he wants to go down in history as the J.M.W. Turner of the Informel movement…He undermines this spontaneity by going over the freshly painted surface with his scraper, blurring the structure of the brushstrokes” (Michael Hübl, “The Melancholist of Virtuosity”, ArtNews, February, 1989, p. 124). Zooming into the very act of painting, Richter’s strokes are gestural without being expressive, the painterly surface remaining entirely non-referential in a way that represented a breakthrough in the artist’s shif towards abstraction. Indeed, his technique of pulling a brush through the wet paint in these works clearly fgures as a precursor to the quasi-mechanical process inherent to his squeegee technique in his Abstrakte Bilder.
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116. Cy Twombly
1928-2011
Untitled signed and dated “1962 Cy Twombly” lower center pencil, wax crayon, colored pencil, watercolor and ballpoint pen on paper 19 5/8 x 27 3/4 in. (50 x 70.4 cm.) Executed in 1962. Estimate $300,000-400,000 Provenance Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne Galerie & Edition Stähli, Zurich Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Zurich, Galerie & Edition Stähli, Cy Twombly. Drawings and Prints, November 23, 1985 January 18, 1986 (illustrated on the invitation card) Literature Nicola Del Roscio, Cy Twombly Drawings, Cat. Rais. Vol. 3 1961-1963, New York, 2013, no. 205, p. 147 (illustrated)
Cy Twombly Untitled, 1962
Delivering the full force of Cy Twombly’s unique pictorial language, Untitled, 1962, is emblematic of the groundbreaking body of work that Twombly created during his acclaimed Baroque period. Pulsating with visceral energy, the work presents the viewer with a dramatic landscape hovering between abstraction and fguration. Intimately related to the painting Vengeance of Achilles, 1962, Kunsthaus Zurich, the composition centers on a triangular form built up with vibrant red lines, the word “temple” illegibly scribbled to the lef of it. Evocative of an erupting volcano, it is as if Twombly here draws us into a mythological landscape of his imagination. Created fve years afer Twombly’s career and lifedefning move to the ancient city of Rome in 1957, Untitled delivers the full force of Twombly’s unique pictorial language that at once invokes the classical past and his immediate contemporary experience. While his contemporaries were fnding inspiration in pop culture or Minimalism, Twombly, starting in 1960, embarked upon a series of groundbreaking works inspired by the epic and dramatic panoramas and classical landscapes of the High Renaissance and Baroque. Heiner Bastian’s observation of the paintings Twombly created at the time perfectly captures the epic scene that Untitled presents: “Twombly’s…works reveal an Olympian landscape, Mount Parnassus rising above the temple of the sacred oracle at Delphi... They invoke the song of the muses of which, it is said, that stopped time itself and that the dome of heaven, and the stars and the sea hesitated, grew calm, drew to a halt on hearing their music...These works are real rather than intangible notions of a distant magical landscape surging up suddenly before us; and, in their actuality, they resist all other empirical space” (Heiner Bastian, Cy Twombly, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Volume II 1961 – 1965, Munich, 1993, p. 25).
Cy Twombly, Vengeance of Achilles, 1962. Kunsthaus Zurich, Artwork © Cy Twombly Foundation
“Twombly’s. . .works reveal an Olympian landscape, Mount Parnassus rising above the temple of the sacred oracle at Delphi. . . They invoke the song of the muses of which, it is said, that stopped time itself and that the dome of heaven, and the stars and the sea hesitated, grew calm, drew to a halt on hearing their music. . .” Heiner Bastian
Untitled vividly illustrates how, within Twombly’s Baroque period of 1960–1963, the cycle of works created from 1962 to 1963 specifcally assumed a much more visceral and existential tone as Twombly began to take a panoply of Dionysian episodes of epic violence and fateful assassinations from Italian and Roman history as a point of departure. While Twombly’s practice cannot be confned to one set of references or circumstances, this radical shif has been viewed in relation to the darkening political mood at the time – characterized by the escalation of Cold War tensions and the threat of imminent nuclear apocalypse as epitomized in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the deteriorating situation in Vietnam, and by, November 1963, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It is telling that many compositions from this period, the present work included, evoke associations with the rocket-borne high-altitude experimental nuclear explosions that had provoked widespread protests from scientists and astronomers.
While this discrete period in Twombly’s oeuvre has given rise to what are now widely regarded as some of his greatest masterpieces – including Leda and the Swan, 1962, and Nine Discourses on Commodus, 1963 – at the time Twombly’s work was largely met with dismissive reviews by an art world in thrall of Pop art and hard-edged Minimalism, and wary of the painterly tradition of “old Europe.” Ironically, while the European embrace of post-war American art had been sanctioned – Robert Rauschenberg won the grand prize at the Venice Biennial the same year – Twombly was being castigated as a “passé foreigner and set outside the forming canon that positioned [Jasper] Johns and Rauschenberg…as the crucial precursors of the aesthetics of the 1960s” (Kurt Varnedoe, Cy Twombly A Retrospective, New York, 1994, p. 39). It was largely thanks to the Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome, from which Untitled originates, that Twombly received the support so essential for the development of his career – which spanned over 60 years – and which is now universally celebrated as one of the central positions in the history of postwar painting. Situated at this pivotal crossroads, Untitled is a testimony to Twombly’s unwavering vision and unbridled innovation.
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117. Philip Guston
1913-1980
Untitled signed and dated “Philip Guston ’63” lower center oil on paper board mounted on Masonite 21 7/8 x 30 in. (55.5 x 76.2 cm.) Executed in 1963. Estimate $280,000-350,000 Provenance Renate Ponsold Motherwell (gifed by the artist in 1966) McKee Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2007
Painted in a moody palette of restrained grays, deep blues, vibrant reds and bold black, Untitled, 1963, is an outstanding work created at the peak of Philip Guston’s abstract period, just a year afer he became the very frst artist that the Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York, would dedicate a solo retrospective to. Distinguished by its exceptional provenance, Untitled was notably gifed by Guston to the artist-photographer Renate Ponsold Motherwell in 1966 before making its way to the present collection via the eminent gallerist David McKee. Renate Ponsold Motherwell and her husband Robert Motherwell were close friends and peers of Guston’s, who gifed the couple a number of works in the mid 1960s. Like-minded artists who continuously challenged the canon with practices that defed easy categorization, Guston and Robert Motherwell had notably been among those artists who lef the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1962 in protest over the Pop art exhibition that the gallery mounted and the shif towards the commercialization of art that this represented. Speaking of the close peer-to-peer relationships among the artists associated with the New York School, Untitled pays tribute to an era that forever changed the course of art history. Building on over a decade of Guston’s abstract practice, Untitled represents the culminating point of a shif in his stylistic idiom that had been set in motion in the mid 1950s. While Guston had garnered widespread acclaim for his “abstract impressionist” works – characterized by short brushstrokes, interlacing horizontal and vertical lines and a luminous
color palette – throughout the decade his ethereal abstractions gradually transformed into broodier compositions. Infuenced by the existential writings of Franz Kafa and Jean-Paul Sartre, by the early 1960s Guston embarked upon a distinct formal shif in his practice. His works are imbued with increasingly somber, anxious tones as dark, ominous forms began to crowd his paintings; his palette now reminiscent of the darker hues used by Venetian painters such as Tintoretto and Titian and in heavy impasto. Representing the culmination of Guston’s abstract practice, Untitled exemplifes the emergence of solid, ominous forms that prefgure the artist’s return to representational modes in the late 1960s. The central triangular form specifcally foreshadows Guston’s signature hood motif. Oscillating between creation and erasure, Guston creates a dense composition in which the circular blue and black masses suggest a sense of three-dimensionality. As Michael Kimmelman observed of this transitional period in Guston’s practice, “these soulful abstractions search out shapes they can’t yet defne. They have the rough, barely mufed anger of raised voices approaching from the other side of a closed door” (Michael Kimmelman, “Art Review: Anxious Liberator of an Era’s Demons”, The New York Times, October 31, 2003, p. E37). While Guston would continue to enjoy critical acclaim for his abstract work – notably receiving a survey show at the Jewish Museum, New York, in 1966 – by the late 1960s he would indeed abandon abstraction only to radically, and controversially, re-emerge as fgurative painter.
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118. Philip Guston
1913-1980
Drawing for Cellar signed and dated “Philip Guston “70” lower right; further signed, titled and dated “PHILIP GUSTON “DRAWING FOR CELLAR” 1970” on the reverse charcoal on paper 17 1/4 x 24 in. (43.9 x 61.1 cm.) Executed in 1970. Estimate $280,000-350,000 Provenance David McKee Gallery, New York Rick Meyerowitz, New York (acquired by 1988) McKee Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2002 Exhibited New York, Marlborough Gallery, Philip Guston Recent Paintings, October 17 - November 7, 1970, no. 41, p. 41 (illustrated) New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philip Guston Drawings 1938-1972, July 11 - September 4, 1973 New York, David McKee Gallery, Philip Guston: Drawings 1947-1977, October - November 1978, no. 44, n.p. (illustrated) New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Museum Overholland, Amsterdam; Museum of Modern Art Oxford; Dublin, The Douglas Hyde Gallery, The Drawings of Philip Guston, September 7, 1988 - September 16, 1989, no. 101, p. 174 (illustrated, p. 126); traveled as Barcelona, Fundacio Caixa de Pensions, Dibuixos: Philip Guston, March 30, 1989 - May 14, 1989, no. 101, p. 146 (illustrated); then traveled as Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Philip Guston: Opere Su Carta 1933-1980, October 11, 1989 - November 26, 1989, no. 82, p. 99 (illustrated)
Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Plane/Figure: Amerikanische Kunst aus Schweizer Privatsammlungen und aus dem Kunstmuseum Winterthur, August 26 – December 3, 2006, no. 69, p. 244 (illustrated, p. 23) Kunstmuseum Bonn; Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum; Vienna, Albertina; Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Pinakothek der Moderne; New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, Philip Guston: Works on Paper, March 1, 2007 - August 31, 2008, no. 62, p. 185 (illustrated, p. 123) Literature David Aranson,“Philip Guston: Ten Drawings”, Boston University Journal, vol. 21, no. 3, 1973, p. 29 (illustrated) Dore Ashton, “La Amerika de Philip Guston”, Plural, February 15, 1974, pp. 47–50 (illustrated, p. 49) Nicholas Serota, ed., Philip Guston: Paintings 1969–1980, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1982, p. 62 (illustrated)
Philip Guston Drawing for Cellar, 1970
Executed in 1970, Philip Guston’s Drawing for Cellar is a powerful drawing articulating the fgurative style that the artist embarked upon two years prior, and that would dominate the last twelve years of the artist’s life. His radical, and at the time highly controversial, break with abstraction not only represented a re-introduction of the human form, but also of a narrative content. As is characteristic for works from this time, Drawing for Cellar depicts ominous fgures that are threatened, or in confict, with overpowering architectural confgurations. Harkening back to his fgurative phase of the late 1930s and 1940s, Guston recasts his signature motifs of piled legs and nail-studded shoes in presenting the viewer with a charged vignette of disembodied limbs tumbling down a trapdoor into a cellar. This evocative composition notably served as the blueprint for Guston’s exceptional painting Cellar from the same year. Rendered with simple and decisive lines, Drawing for Cellar illustrates Guston’s celebrated drafsmanship – its signifcance underscored by its inclusion in some of the most infuential Guston exhibitions in the past decades.
For Guston, who began drawing at age 12, drawing played a central role in his restless explorations of form, space, and pictorial structure. As he declared in 1973, three years afer completing Drawing for Cellar, “It is the bareness of drawing that I like. The act of drawing is what locates, suggests, discovers. At times it seems enough to draw, without the distractions of color and mass” (Philip Guston, “Ten Drawings”, Boston University Journal, vol. 21, Fall 1973, n.p.). The importance of drawing becomes particularly evident when one considers that it was through drawing that Guston radically returned to fguration, notably exclusively focusing on drawing during his hiatus from painting between 1967 and 1969. While ofen titling his works on paper as “studies”, Guston in fact rarely followed his drawings closely in his painted compositions.
“Guston was locked away in his breeze block studio in Woodstock doing these minimal drawings of the things around him - clocks, shoes, books - that were both fgurative and abstract. Drawing was a crucial aspect in his development. He always returned to drawing to work out where the paintings were going… when you look at those works, the use of colour, the composition, the line, it’s all just virtuoso.” David McKee
Drawing for Cellar exemplifes the distinctive pictorial idiom that Guston developed in drawing as in painting, one which masterfully fused both high and low art references into a style that is uniquely Guston’s. Guston, who had initially intended to become a comic strip artist, here clearly channels the reduced aesthetic of cartoons. Echoing the underground aesthetic of Robert Crumb in the late 1960s, it is perhaps no coincidence that this work was initially in the collection of famed illustrator Rick Meyerowitz. Simultaneously, however, Guston’s drawings from this time also show clear afnities with Max Beckmann’s graphic oeuvre – both in terms of the crudely outlined forms, the psychological charge and foreboding sense of underlying the depicted vignettes. Preceding Guston’s celebrated Nixon Drawings from 1971-1975, Drawing for Cellar as such is a remarkable work that resonates as powerfully today as it did at the time of its conception. Philip Guston, Cellar, 1970. Private Collection. Artwork © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth
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119. Brice Marden
b. 1938
Rock 4 signed with the artist’s initials “BM” lower right ink on Lanaquarelle paper 11 1/2 x 6 1/4 in. (29.2 x 15.9 cm.) Executed in 2000. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance Matthew Marks Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Brice Marden, Attendants, Bears and Rocks, exh. cat., Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, 2002, no. 41, n.p. (illustrated)
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120. Willem de Kooning
1904-1997
Untitled signed “de Kooning� lower center charcoal on paper 11 x 8 1/2 in. (28 x 21.6 cm.) Executed circa 1975-1980. Estimate $15,000-20,000 Provenance Estate of the Artist Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
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121. Willem de Kooning
1904-1997
Untitled signed “de Kooning� lower right charcoal on paper 10 7/8 x 8 1/2 in. (27.9 x 21.6 cm.) Executed circa 1970-1975. Estimate $15,000-20,000 Provenance Estate of the Artist Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Willem de Kooning: Drawings and Sculpture, October 31 December 19, 1998
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122. Gerhard Richter
b. 1932
Quattro Colori signed “Richter” on the reverse; numbered “56” on a label afxed to the reverse lacquer in four unique colors on Alu-Dibond plate mounted on wood 7 5/8 x 7 5/8 in. (19.4 x 19.4 cm.) Executed in 2008, this work is number 56 from a series of 80 unique works. Estimate $30,000-40,000
Provenance Serpentine Gallery, London Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Hubertus Butin, Stefan Gronert and Thomas Olbricht, eds., GERHARD RICHTER, Editions 1965 – 2013, Ostfldern, 2014, no. 138, p. 310 (another example from the series illustrated)
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123. Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Three works: (i-iii) Self-Portrait (i) stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., initialed “T.J.H.” and numbered “PA02.00087” on the reverse (ii) stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., initialed “T.J.H.” and numbered “PA02.00049” on the reverse (iii) stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., initialed “T.J.H.” and numbered “PA02.00168” on the reverse polaroid photographs each 4 1/4 x 3 3/8 in. (10.8 x 8.6 cm.) Executed in 1986. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc., New York The Vanmoerkerke Collection, Belgium Phillips, London, April 3, 2008, lot 14 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Willem de Kooning, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg – the list of esteemed names that constitute the Collection of Miles and Shirley Fiterman reads like a who’s who 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 throughout their lives. 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.
Andy Warhol, Miles Fiterman, 1975. Artwork © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Opposite: Andy Warhol, Shirley Fiterman, 1976. Artwork © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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, and 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.
“I took a SX-70 and I put in a whole roll and I got ten . . . pictures of that and then he put a cigar in his mouth . . . I think they [Luciano Anselmino and Man Ray] were friends because Luciano bought him the best cigars in town . . . and actually the cigar was biger than he was.” Andy Warhol
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124. Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Four works: (i-iv) Man Ray (i, iii) signed “Andy Warhol” on the reverse (ii, iv) signed and dated “Andy Warhol 1974” on the reverse acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas (i) 16 1/8 x 12 1/8 in. (41 x 30.7 cm.) (ii) 15 7/8 x 12 in. (40.4 x 30.5 cm.) (iii) 16 1/8 x 12 in. (41 x 30.5 cm.) (iv) 15 7/8 x 12 1/4 in. (40.6 x 31 cm.) Executed in 1974. Estimate $350,000-500,000 Provenance Jules Brassner, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited West Palm Beach, Norton Gallery & School of Art, 1993 - 1994 (on extended loan) Literature Neil Printz and Sally King-Nero, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures, 1970 - 1974, vol. 3, London, 2010, no. 2666-2669, p. 397 (illustrated, pp. 393, 394)
Andy Warhol May Ray, 1974
In April 1974, a young Italian dealer named Luciano Anselmino commissioned Andy Warhol to make a series of portraits of Man Ray. Enthused by an encounter he had orchestrated between the two creative giants the previous year, Anselmino had imagined producing a collaborative publication between the two, which would include creative contributions by Jasper Johns and Henry Miller, and use the Man Ray portraits as a cover and frontispiece for the volume. Though this ambitious project never materialized as planned, it gave way to a cycle of works comprising a total of 43 canvases: 28 works responding to Anselmino’s particular demands, and 15 additional paintings, including 11 smaller canvases, that Warhol created on his own terms and kept for himself.
Of the latter group of smaller paintings, two are housed in Tate, London, and National Galleries of Scotland collections, and one resides in the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut. Signifying their lasting value and importance within the artist’s oeuvre, Four Works: Man Ray, 1974, also pertain to the second cycle of smaller Man Rays. They brim with a turbulent exuberance that is redolent of Abstract Expressionist fervor, and exude a rare intimate feel that reveals the mutual admiration between Warhol and Man Ray. Plunged in swathes of painterly color, each work from Four Works: Man Ray displays a delectable wet-onwet mixture of tonalities, layered with a clear acrylic medium that imparts the overall images with a thick, painterly feel. As irreverent strokes of Phthalo Green, Indo Orange and Dioxazine Purple run over Man Ray’s cheeks, eyes, hat and cigar, each composition comes to life, imparted with a gestural vigor that kindles the elder artist’s crystallized posture. The accentuated shadows around the edges of his face and the unexpected shafs of light piercing through certain areas of the work furthermore recall the eccentric contours and intriguing light plays pervading Man Ray’s own Solarisation works. Thrown into relief and displaying dissonant tones throughout, these paintings exemplify a style that additionally resembles the creative approach of stellar colorists such as Henri Rousseau and Henri Matisse. Portraying a key fgure of Surrealism and a pioneer of modern photography, Warhol’s Man Ray works have been celebrated as some of the artist’s most accomplished portraits, taking on unique painterly qualities. A pictorial mirror to Man Ray’s notoriously subversive character, Warhol’s portraits of him are
Andy Warhol, Man Ray, 1973. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg/ Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
rendered with equally vigorous strokes and freefowing lines, eschewing the usual sleekness and glamorized stillness of previous painted subjects. As such, the Man Rays initiated what became a new hybrid category in Warhol’s oeuvre, in which distinctions between entrepreneurial content and “free subjects’” were blurred. Executed on the request of Man Ray’s gallerist in Turin, the Man Rays were nonetheless pursued by Warhol freely and in his own time, similar to his Last Supper, Ladies and Gentleman, and Athletes series. Perhaps Man Ray’s physique – Warhol described him as “adorable,” “really cute,” and “one of the oldest people I’d known” – intrigued the artist; or perhaps it was the dissonance in their photographic practice that piqued his interest. Anselmino cites the “private and personal, I should like to say, even sentimental nature” of Man Ray as a painterly theme; according to the gallerist, Warhol’s preference for him plays an undeniable part in the afectionate character of his rendition (Luciano Anselmino, quoted in The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures, 1970-1974, vol. 3, New York, 2004, p. 373). Yet, though the popular narrative would have it that the two artists had chosen one another from longstanding mutual esteem, Timothy Baum declared that Man Ray had in fact never heard of Warhol, and that, conversely, Warhol “only loved him because of his name – Man Ray” (Andy Warhol, quoted in The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné: Paintings and Sculptures, 1970-1974, vol. 3, New York, 2004, p. 369). Upon frst meeting Man Ray, Warhol had indeed felt intimidated to the point of requiring Baum’s presence for stress alleviation. He then began directing his elder more freely as he warmed to his presence, asking him to remove his glasses, put a cigar to his mouth
Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol and Man Ray, 1973. Artwork © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
and tilt his head. In essence, the encounter was not the gargantuan event that was then made of it, but instead refected a deeply human moment in which the connection between the two men fourished progressively. In the resulting portraits, this very real and intimate aspect becomes evident in a way that distinguishes the Man Rays from Warhol’s previous and subsequent set of portraits, including Marylin, Elvis, and Mao. Captured by an innocent eye and later manipulated through paint, Man Ray is raw and free of artifce; it contains the idiosyncrasies of a natural photograph seized à la volée.
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125. Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Campbell’s Soup Can #2 signed and dated “Andy Warhol 62” on the reverse graphite and colored pencil on paper 15 x 21 7/8 in. (38.1 x 55.6 cm.) Executed in 1962. Estimate $600,000-800,000 Provenance Locksley Shea Gallery, Minneapolis Acquired from the above by the present owner
Andy Warhol
Campbell’s Soup Can #2, 1962
Executed in 1962, the year that saw the birth of the Pop Art movement in the United States, Campbell’s Soup Can #2 marks the beginning of Andy Warhol’s sustained engagement with the subject of American consumerism, and illustrates the artist’s lifelong commitment to drawing at the dawn of his burgeoning conceptual artistic practice. Presenting two Campbell’s soup cans atop an immaculate surface, this early work on paper is an exceptional example from Warhol’s eponymous series that he continued working on throughout his career – namely during his 1970s Retrospectives and Reversals, and in 1985 through his direct collaboration with the Campbell’s Soup company. Through the meticulous working of the artist’s hand, Campbell’s Soup Can #2 showcases the intimate and impeccable process with which Warhol’s paradigmatic motif was developed. Working on the subject, uninterruptedly from December 1961 until March 1962, Warhol’s concern with the soup cans continued to span prints, paintings, drawings and sculpture. The present work highlights the unwavering importance of drawing as a foundation within the artist’s wider oeuvre, which he employed from the earliest stages of his career as a commercial illustrator until his untimely passing in 1987. Notably, Campbell’s Soup Can #2 brings attention to a commercial staple of American life since the 19th century, which Warhol strikingly infused with Pop fervor and modernity. A testament to its importance within Warhol’s oeuvre, Campbell’s Soup Can #2’s history furthermore provides particular insight into the artist’s rapid ascent to the international scene. Acquired directly by Miles and Shirley Fiterman through Gordon Locksley and George Shea, of Locksley Shea Galleries in Minneapolis, the drawing forms part of a collection of works that the eminent duo purchased ahead of a long-lasting friendship with the artist. As one of the earliest works by Warhol in their extensive collection, Campbell’s Soup Can #2 illustrates the couple’s sustained patronage of the artist at the dawn and core of their creative mission, and highlights the importance of Warhol’s early contributions as he gained increasing momentum outside of Manhattan.
Campbell’s Soup Can #2 highlights Warhol’s exquisite command of the medium. The practice of drawing had enthused the artist from his earliest days as an art student in the 1940s, to his frst forays as an illustrator and his continued artistic activity materialized in striking stand-alone sketches, silkscreens, paintings and flms. Throughout his life, he perceived the medium not just as a professional, artistic means to portray elements of the real world, but also as a cathartic force and activity in itself – one that he frequently undertook on his notoriously spiritual Sundays following Mass. Tied to the craf of drawing throughout his life, Warhol introduced new techniques that have since become inextricably associated to his persona and profusely replicated worldwide. Among which, the artist’s infamous “blotted-line” technique, carried out by layering a foundational drawing with ink or watercolor, before pressing the resulting image against a clean sheet of paper, displayed Warhol’s ability to achieve a near perfect image whilst maintaining the manual and methodical process of drawing. Revealing erasures, smudges and altered forms, Warhol’s pristine blottedlines highlight the unwavering life of the artist’s hand as it glides across the paper. Using only a pencil and a sheet of paper, Campbell’s Soup Can #2 displays the arresting simplicity and unfaltering control that underpin some of Warhol’s best work. Unlike the screen-printed Ferus Type soup cans, which most ofen erased all traces of the hand and enacted an exact replication of the Campbell’s logo, the present work is replete with vestiges of Warhol’s idiosyncratic and energetic hand. The faintly drawn yet detailed contours of the two Campbell’s tins foating across the pictorial space conjure an image that is minimalistically simple yet eye-catching, while the hand-worked aspects of the composition evidence the artist’s inimitable precision and distinct draughtsmanship. Stripping away extraneous detail and focusing on the depicted items’ essential outlines, Warhol sheds light on the soup cans in a clear and straightforward manner that underscores their commanding presence as objects. Executed with varying shades and intensity of graphite, as well as shy
carmine fllings that emulate the Campbell’s soup cans iconic red color, Warhol imparts the titular trademark product with charisma that brings attention to its bold conceptual countenance as a subject matter. Portraying an iconic product of commercial branding, Campbell’s Soup Can #2 indeed demonstrates Warhol’s incessant engagement with contemporary culture. When asked in 1963 why he had chosen to paint Campbell’s soup cans, the artist candidly replied: “I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again” (Georg Frei and Neil Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings and Sculpture 1961-1963, vol. 1, New York, 2002, p. 50). Campbell’s Soup Can #2 thus functions as a commentary on the ubiquity of consumer products and more specifcally canned foods, whilst revealing Warhol’s inextricable ties to Americana, which he concedes emanate warmth and intimacy despite their omnipresence in the multiplying bodegas and supermarkets of the country. The artist masterfully sheds light on a nationally coveted object that had become overexposed to the point of invisibility, and, by the same token, elevates the branded canned food’s deemed commonplace status to that of art.
Andy Warhol shops at Gristedes Supermarket in New York, 1964. Photo © Bob Adelman Estate
Bringing together a variety of elements that later became emblems of Warhol’s practice, Campbell’s Soup Can #2 was executed in one of the most decisive years of the artist’s career. 1962 marked the advent of two pivotal shows for Warhol: his solo debut at Walter Hopps and Irving Blum’s legendary Ferus Gallery during the summer of 1962, which launched him to international acclaim, and his solo pop art exhibition at Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery in New York, later that year in November. Particularly signifcant within Warhol’s oeuvre, this year furthermore coincides with another of the artist’s most revered Pop breakthroughs: his iconic portraits of Marylin Monroe. Soon thereafer emerged his advertising paintings, which cemented his visibility and popularity within the art world. One can easily infer the genesis of this momentous progression upon observing Campbell’s Soup Can #2: a testament to Warhol’s inimitable and enduring genius, this simply yet exquisitely achieved work on paper epitomizes his ability to condense multifarious social commentaries through humble yet striking imagery.
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126. Roy Lichtenstein
1923-1997
Brushstroke Head IV (Barcelona Head) incised with the artist’s signature, number and date “© 3/6 rf Lichtenstein ’87” and stamped with the Tallix foundry mark on the base painted and patinated bronze 44 x 20 x 10 in. (111.8 x 50.8 x 25.4 cm.) Executed in 1987, this work is number 3 from an edition of 6. Estimate $600,000-800,000 Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1988
Exhibited New York, 65 Thompson, Roy Lichtenstein, Bronze Sculpture 1976 - 1989, May 19 - July 1, 1989, no. 31, pp. 80, 89 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 81) New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art; The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Roy Lichtenstein, October 8, 1993 - September 5, 1994, no. 269, p. 338 (another example exhibited and illustrated) Washington, National Gallery of Art, The Robert and Jane Meyerhof Collection, 1945 to 1995, March 31 July 21, 1996, no. 99, pp. 121, 249 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 125) Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Roy Lichtenstein, May 24 - September 27, 1998, no. 60, p. 113 (another example exhibited) Mexico City, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey; Valencia, Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno; A Coruña, Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza; Lisbon, Centro Cultural de Belém, Roy Lichtenstein: Imágenes reconocibles: Escultura, pintura y gráfca, July 9 - October 18, 1998, p. 60 (another example exhibited and illustrated); then traveled as Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Roy Lichtenstein: Sculpture & Drawings, June 5 September 30, 1999, no. 108, p. 59 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 157) London, Gagosian Gallery; New York, Gagosian Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein, Sculpture, June 6 - October 22, 2005, pp. 76, 119 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 77) New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein, Re-Figure, November 4, 2016 – January 28, 2017, p. 25 (another example exhibited and illustrated) Literature Mary Lee Corlett, The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein, A Catalogue Raisonné 1948-1993, New York, 1994, p. 206
Roy Lichtenstein
Brushstroke Head IV (Barcelona Head), 1987
Remaining in the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection for over four decades, Roy Lichtenstein’s Brushstroke Head IV (Barcelona Head), 1987, presents the striking precursor to the large-scale public sculpture Barcelona Head, which the artist created as a commission for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. Towering over 45 feet tall to this day in the center of Barcelona, it is among the most iconic of Lichtenstein’s sculptures and epitomizes the triumphal return of the female fgure in the last decade of the Pop artist’s life. With a sly nod to Abstract Expressionism, his own 1960s Pop art idiom and the traditional motif of the female bust, Lichtenstein here puts forth a dynamic sculpture that oscillates between abstraction and representation. A deconstructed female face emerges as the viewer walks around the sculpture, and swooshing brushstrokes and Ben-Day dots give way to forms redolent of eyelashes, an elongated nose, and pouting lips. Executed in 1987 in an edition of six, this work represents the culmination of a series of four Brushstroke Head iterations that Lichtenstein created as part of his lengthy and exacting process, and the fnal form for his Barcelona commission. Brushstroke Head IV (Barcelona Head) brilliantly expands upon Lichtenstein’s three-dimensional interrogation of the brushstroke motif that he had frst commenced in 1981 with Brushstroke Sculpture, an example of which also resided in the Fitermans’s revered collection. Harkening back to his early Brushstroke Paintings from the mid 1960s, Lichtenstein here too subverts the subjectivity of the gestural brushstroke with his trademark graphic line and boldly colored Ben-Day dots, the dot system used in mass-circulation commercial printing. While Lichtenstein zoomed into the very gesture of action painting in direct reaction
against – and parody of – the dominating movement of Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s, he returned to the motif in 1981 in sculptural form. The present work brilliantly furthers the artist’s early investigations by challenging the primacy of abstract painting and division between artistic media that critics such as Clement Greenberg had espoused. As Jack Cowart observed, “Lichtenstein seems busily deconstructing the language and painterly idioms of Abstract Expressionism to make its artistic medium the actual message… In these brushstroke sculptures it is as if Lichtenstein wanted us to think this is what Franz Kline, as well, might have done had he worked in three dimensions. Clearly this historic appropriation is the case with Lichtenstein’s next suite of four Brushstroke Heads, 1987, in editions of six, where he takes de Kooning like face forms and casts them in painted and patinated bronze. Since we already know that de Kooning made sculpture (but not at all like this), we appreciate the conceptual and visual puns all the more” (Jack Cowart, Lichtenstein: Sculptures & Drawings, exh. cat., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999, p. 19). While Lichtenstein engaged with diferent artistic styles and movements throughout his career, Brushstroke Head IV (Barcelona Head) comes from a period where the artist was re-engaging with his very own practice. Embracing a post-modern metadiscourse with artistic precedents, Lichtenstein ofers a masterful double loop of appropriation that explores the conventions of art historical precedents – including his own world-famous oeuvre. Indeed, beyond echoing his early Brushstroke paintings, Lichtenstein here also reprises the motif of the female fgure that had lain
dormant in the preceding decades and would culminate in the 1990s with such works as Woman: Sunlight, Moonlight, 1996. Whereas Lichtenstein’s early “Girl Paintings” were driven by an interest in elevating the clichés and banalities of popular culture, while also exploring notions of reproduction, his exploration of the female fgure, starting in the late 1980s, refects his movement towards the pastiche of established art historical traditions.
Above/below: Roy Lichtenstein, Barcelona Head, 1992. Picture by Manuel Cohen/Art Resource, NY, Artwork © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein Roy Lichtenstein, Brushstrokes with Spatter, 1966. The Art Institute of Chicago, Barbara Nef Smith and Solomon Byron Smith Purchase Fund, 1966.3., The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY, Artwork © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
With Brushstroke Head IV (Barcelona Head), Lichtenstein boldly challenges traditional sculptural norms – both through his application of high gloss, vibrant paint upon the revered medium of bronze, and his deconstruction of the female bust. As Hal Foster observed, “The collision of high and low modes is the very strategy of his art, indeed of Pop in general, and here he extends it to sculpture as well: traditional bust meets abstract mannequin, Abstract Expressionist brushstroke meets cartoon sign of the same...if there is a radical edge in Lichtenstein, it lies here: less in his thematic appropriation of comics and the like, and more in his formal reconciliation of lowly contents and high forms” (Hal Foster, Roy Lichtenstein, Sculpture, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2005, p. 10). Lichtenstein’s conception of this work as a precursor to the monumental public sculpture Barcelona Head expands upon this eradicating of boundaries between high and low art. Formally and conceptually complex, Brushstroke Head IV (Barcelona Head) not only demonstrates the core tenets that catapulted Lichtenstein to acclaim in the 1960s, it moreover speaks of an artist in his twilight years relentlessly reinventing his practice.
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127. Robert Indiana
1928-2018
LOVE (Blue Outside Red Inside) stamped with the artist’s name, number and date “© 1995 R INDIANA 3/6” on the lower interior edge of the letter E polychrome aluminum 72 x 72 x 36 in. (182.9 x 182.9 x 91.4 cm.) Conceived in 1966 and executed in 1995, this work is number 3 from an edition of 6 plus 4 artist’s proofs. Estimate $800,000-1,200,000 Provenance Marisa Del Re Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
Robert Indiana LOVE (Blue Outside Red Inside), 1966
A cardinal symbol of Pop art, LOVE (Blue Outside Red Inside) is a quintessential example of Robert Indiana’s ability to use text and language to transcend conventional distinctions between Minimalism, Pop art, and modernism. Indiana orientates the four letters that constitute the word over a strict cruciform axis, the gridding of which he only jeopardizes with the playful energy emitted from the tilted “O”. Radiating in cerulean and carmine, LOVE serves as an homage to the artist’s father who worked at a Phillips 66 gas station in the Midwestern United States during the Great Depression: at once deeply personal and emblematic of the American experience, the work echoes the red logo set against a blue Indiana sky. A fundamental component of Miles and Shirley Fiterman’s collection of exceptional examples of Pop art, Indiana’s LOVE (Blue Outside Red Inside) has achieved global recognition since its conception in 1966, and versions of the work have been installed in public and private collections across the United States as well as in Canada, Europe, South America, Asia, and Israel. Ascribed to the sculpture’s vibrant palette and instantaneous impact, LOVE (Blue Outside Red Inside) has become an iconic Pop motif that takes its place in the pantheon of imagery alongside Andy Warhol’s soup cans and Roy Lichtenstein’s Ben-Day dots. By the mid 1960s, the New York art world was experiencing an unprecedented change of artistic tides as Minimalism was rapidly gaining popularity and the frst wave of Pop art was nearing the end of its reign. Indiana championed the duality that characterized the climate with the conception of LOVE, marrying the
Robert Indiana in North Haven, Connecticut, 1970. Photographed by Tom Rummler, Artwork © 2019 Morgan Art Foundation Ltd./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
two movements in the visual immediacy of the work, which is reminiscent of the bold, arresting quality of billboards and advertisements. The word “love” appears frequently within his oeuvre, as evidenced by the emergence of its iconography in a series of poems he composed in 1958 before its appearance in his seminal paintings Four Star Love, 1961, Portland Museum of Art, Maine and Love is God, 1964. It was these explorations in two-dimension that laid the groundwork for Indiana to propel the composition into the third dimension: “I like to work on a square canvas, since the way I put the letters down, it is the most economical, the most dynamic way to put four letters on a square canvas. This is how the LOVE came about…” (Robert Indiana, quoted in Barbarelee Diamonstein, Inside New York’s Art World, New York, 1979, pp. 151-153). By transposing the abstract concept of “love” into a tangible three-dimensional object that can be seen and touched, Indiana has engaged with Conceptualism, Pop, and Minimalism. LOVE (Blue Outside Red Inside) is also denotative of Indiana’s investigation of modernist themes through a Pop lens. According to the artist, the “‘LOVE Sculpture’ is the culmination of ten years of work based on the original premise that the word is an appropriated and usable element of art, just as Picasso and the Cubists made use of it at the beginning of the century, which evolved inevitably, in both my “LOVE” paintings and sculpture, into the concept that the word is also a ft and viable subject for art” (Robert Indiana, Art New: New York, vol. 1, no. 3, March 1969, n.p.). The sculpture can be interpreted as a conceptual allusion to the
manipulation of wordplay at the hands of the Dadaists and Cubists. Just as the “JOU” in Pablo Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning, 1911-1912 may be a witty pun on the French word “jouer” (to play) and the popular Parisian newspaper Le Journal, the word “love” implies many connotations, including ones that are amorous, platonic, spiritual, and cultural. As such, LOVE (Blue Outside Red Inside) operates not only within the realm of Pop art, but as a broader refection on the preoccupation with language and word play in modern art. Perhaps what makes the work so evocative is its perennial ability to remain timeless. The imagery was already identifed as emblematic of the Pop movement when The Museum of Modern Art in New York selected the image for their annual Christmas card in 1965. As Arron Ott noted, “LOVE is capable of holding meaning in a variety of histories. It was created in the shadow of hippie culture but powerful enough to escape that orbit in order to resonate in numerous contemporary and personalized contexts” (Aaron Ott, Robert Indiana: A Sculpture Retrospective, exh. cat., Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Bufalo, 2018, p. 87). LOVE (Blue Outside Red Inside) crystallizes many of the major themes that Robert Indiana has investigated throughout his career and one of the most fascinating aspects of this work is it’s ability to remain timeless and contemporary at the same time. More than 50 years has passed since it’s conception and it is clear that having served as inspiration whether directly or indirectly to a younger generation of artists Indiana’s LOVE persists in a profound manner.
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128. Willem de Kooning
1904-1997
Untitled signed “de Kooning” lower right oil on newsprint mounted on honeycomb panel 22 5/8 x 29 1/2 in. (57.4 x 75 cm.) Executed in 1977. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance Private Collection, New York (acquired directly from the artist) Christie’s, New York, May 2, 1985, lot 17 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
In Willem de Kooning’s Untitled, 1977, free-fowing brushstrokes writhe and dance with exhilarating energy across a sheet of newspaper, coalescing into an amorphous abstraction of chromatic brilliance. Demonstrating the opulence and openness of de Kooning’s celebrated “pastoral” abstractions from the late 1970s, this work beautifully exemplifes the artist’s shif from the tightly organized compositions and heavily worked, dense canvases of the 1960s to a looser idiom and luminous color palette inspired by the landscape of Springs, Long Island. Executed in 1977, Untitled was notably created in a year that is widely celebrated as the most productive and seminal of de Kooning’s career, one which gave rise to some of his greatest masterpieces.
as Untitled, de Kooning would press large sheets of The New York Times and The Village Voice directly onto his freshly-painted canvases – intentionally creating subtle rippling efects before carefully peeling them of. Beyond their status as unmediated, intermediary records of de Kooning’s painting in progress, these works generate complex and compelling meanings of their own as the immediacy of de Kooning’s painterly gestures collide with the black and white printed words of the newsprint. A true painter of modern life, de Kooning puts forth a time capsule that seems to capture all the idiosyncrasies of the era – reminiscing on abstract art’s love afair with the intensity of urban life and capturing the increasing infltration of mass media and popular culture into high culture.
Untitled powerfully evidences how de Kooning continued his pioneering imprint technique in parallel to painting his abstracted landscapes. Expanding upon the newsprint technique he had integrated into his practice since the 1940s, de Kooning began exploring the aesthetic possibilities of what he termed “countertypes” in the mid 1960s. To create works such
Willem de Kooning, 1964. Photograph by Hans Namuth © 1991 Hans Namuth Estate, Courtesy Center for Creative Photography. Artwork © 2019 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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129. Willem de Kooning
1904-1997
Untitled signed and dated “de Kooning” lower right oil on newsprint mounted on canvas 29 3/4 x 23 3/4 in. (75.6 x 68.1 cm.) Executed in 1969. Estimate $70,000-100,000 Provenance Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Sotheby’s, New York, November 5, 1987, lot 293 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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130. Josef Albers
1888-1976
Study to Homage to the Square - Endless signed with the artist’s monogram and dated “A 64” lower right oil on Masonite 16 x 16 in. (40.6 x 40.6 cm.) Painted in 1964, 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 1964.1.113. Estimate $120,000-180,000 Provenance Robert Elkon Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1966
Luminous and radiating, Study to Homage to the Square – Endless, 1964, perfectly encapsulates the exploration of color, rhythm and spatial movement at the heart of Josef Albers’s iconic Homage to the Square series. Rendered in shades from ochre to cadmium yellow, the work draws the viewer into a beautiful pictorial space that seems to emanate pure light, with the distinct color felds appearing to expand before the eye despite the geometrical regularity of the composition. Painted in 1964, just one year afer Albers published his seminal treatise Interaction of Color, this work demonstrates the technical mastery of color and form that Albers had attained with his Homage to the Square series more than a decade afer frst commencing it. Albers painted his Homages to the Square works daily as a kind of meditative exercise, continuously pursuing his investigations into color theory and perception with subtly diferent means until the end of his life. Seeking to minimize evidence of the artist’s hand, Albers applied unmixed paint directly from the tube, applying it with a palette knife with short and precise strokes to the absorbent and rigid Masonite board. As with all of his Homage to the Squares, Albers carefully recorded the technical details of its execution, including each paint used, on the reverse of each Masonite panel. Along with Albers’s reductive and systematic application of color, this codifcation clearly refects a
conceptual understanding of painting that anticipates much of art making in the mid 1960s when painting was stripped of its transcendental aims. As art historian Heinz Liesbrock noted, despite the series’ overarching title of Homage to the Square, “…the square is not a goal in itself; rather, it above all gives a form to color and to the genuinely painterly organization of color” (Heinz Liesbrock, Josef Albers, Interaction, exh. cat., Villa Hügel, Essen, 2018, p. 59). For Albers, the purpose of the integration of color was to evoke diferent moods and visual efects through the contrasting combination of seemingly overlapping squares – ofen refected in his titles, which he regarded as poetic language. Study to Homage to the Square – Endless beautifully exemplifes how, as Albers once stated, he “was for years in the yellow period” (Josef Albers, quoted in “Oral history interview with Josef Albers”, June 22 - July 5, 1968, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., online). Deeply infuenced by Goethe’s 1810 Theory of Color, Josef viewed this hue as caring, curing and uplifing. Study to Homage to the Square – Endless echoes Goethe’s words, “a strong yellow…has a magnifcent and noble efect…The eye is gladdened, the heart expands, the feelings are cheered, an immediate warmth seems to waf toward us.”
Robert Mangold, Distorted Circle within a Polygon I, 1972. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/ Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2019 Robert Mangold/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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131. Jim Dine
b. 1935
Heart and Venus bronze 84 x 84 x 56 in. (213.4 x 213.4 x 142.2 cm.) Executed in 1993, this work is number 6 from an edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance PaceWildenstein, New York Arij Gasiunasen Fine Art, Palm Beach (acquired from the above in 1995) Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Trieste, Civico Museo Revoltella, Jim Dine’s Venus, July 12 - September 22, 1996, pp. 16, 17, 36 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 37) Wasau, Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Contemporary Sculpture: The Figurative Tradition, June 1, 1997- May 1, 1998, p. 6 (another example exhibited and illustrated) Literature Jim Dine: Major Icon Paintings and Sculptures, exh. cat., Arij Gasiunasen Fine Art, Palm Beach, 1995 (another example illustrated on the back cover) “Jim Dine e la Pop Art: ciclo di video al Revoltella”, Il Piccolo, August 2, 1996, n.p. (another example illustrated) Jason Edward Kaufman, “US and Canadian 1998 Museum Acquisitions”, The Art Newspaper, no. 89, February 1999, n.p. D’après l’antique, exh. cat., Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2000, p. 469 (another example illustrated) Jim Dine, exh. cat., Galleria Agnellini Arte Moderna, Brescia, 2011, pp. 41, 48, 49 Sara Davidson, ed., Jim Dine: Sculpture, 1983-present, no. 1993.01, online (another example illustrated)
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132. Claes Oldenburg
b. 1929
Sof Screw incised with the artist’s signature “Oldenburg” and embossed with the title, inscription, number and date “5/24 SOFT SCREW © COPYRIGHT 1975 CLAES OLDENBURG PRODUCED BY GEMINI G.E.L. II” on the underside cast elastomeric urethane and lacquered mahogany base height 45 7/8 in. (116.5 cm.) diameter 14 7/8 in. (37.8 cm.) Executed in 1975, this work is number 5 from an edition of 24 plus 3 artist’s proofs, 3 printer’s proofs and 1 special proof. Estimate $18,000-25,000 Provenance Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles Private Collection Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Chicago, Richard Gray Gallery, Claes Oldenburg: An Exhibition of Recent Small Scale Fabricated Works and Drawings, September 30 - November 15, 1977 (another example exhibited) Cincinnati, Carl Solway Gallery, Claes Oldenburg: A Complete Survey of Sculptures in Edition 1963 - 1990, April 20 - June 9, 1990 (another example exhibited) Cleveland, BP Building, Larger than Life: Monument Proposals by Claes Oldenburg and Large-scale Outdoor Sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, November 11, 1991 - January 31, 1992 (another example exhibited) Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, Claes Oldenburg: In the Studio, August 2, 1992 - February 14, 1993 (another example exhibited) Marseille, Musée Cantini, Claes Oldenburg: in the Studio – dans l’Atelier, July 10 - September 12, 1993 (another example exhibited) Literature Rudi H. Fuchs, Claes Oldenburg: Large-Scale Projects, 1977-1980, New York, 1980, p. 46 (another example illustrated) Francis Smith, Sculpture, An Illustrated Catalogue: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1994, p. 165 (another example illustrated)
Knoll as a drafsman and eventually joined his company as the director of the Knoll Planning Unit, later becoming partner and co-owner.
Florence Knoll Bassett (née Schust), an architect and pioneer of modern interior design, died earlier this year at 101. A true visionary, “Shu”—as she was afectionately called by those who knew her well—was one of the most infuential architects and designers of post-war America, yet her mark on modern design transcends any one of these felds. Her career is inextricably linked with Knoll, Inc., the furniture company founded by Hans Knoll, who later became her husband. During the 1940s, she worked with designers like Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, and George Nakashima to create designs that fulflled a need for modern interiors, and along the way produced innovative, high-quality furniture classics that are still relevant today.
Shu transformed the feld of “interior design” and collaborated with the most important mid-century modern architects, including Philip Johnson, Gordon Bunshaf and Marcel Breuer. Her showrooms for Knoll became laboratories for contemporary design on how we could live and work, and came to represent her signature “Knoll look” that would epitomize the style of the 1950s. Her location at 575 Madison Avenue was one of the frst to incorporate contemporary art, and included pieces from artists she had personal friendships with. She developed her appreciation of Paul Klee from her mentor Mies van der Rohe, who at the time had a large collection of Klees, and when a group of works from the artist didn’t sell in her showroom, she purchased all of them. Shu visited Black Mountain College to see the painter and teacher Josef Albers, from whom she said she learned about color, and later worked with his wife Anni Albers to develop textiles for the Knoll line.
Born to a baker in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1917, Shu was beset by tragedy throughout her early life afer becoming an orphan at 14. She ended up at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfeld Hills, Michigan during the 1930s, where she was taken under the wing of the Saarinen family and was exposed to the importance of the overlapping felds of art, craf, and design. Later in Chicago, she was introduced to a rationalist design approach with Mies van der Rohe and received her Bachelor of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1941. She started moonlighting for Hans
Afer Hans Knoll died in a car crash in 1955, Shu became president of the company, and very ofen public art was integrated into her large projects. In 1955, while Shu was designing the interiors for the Bank of the Southwest in Houston, she met the Mexican artist Rufno Tamayo and remembered him coming to visit her with a small model of the mural that was going to be installed in the bank and today is considered to be one of his fnest mural works. For many years, her Tamayo painting of watermelon slices was the frst artwork a visitor was greeted by when they visited her home.
Florence Knoll and her dog, Cartree, at the 575 Madison Avenue Knoll Associates Showroom, 1956. Courtesy Knoll Archive.
In 1958, Shu—by then the single most powerful fgure in the feld of modern design—married bank executive Harry Hood Bassett and eventually settled in Miami, where she would go on to design commercial Miami interiors in addition to several private residences. Hood Bassett was an important civic leader in Miami, and the corporate art collection that was developed for the Southeast First National Bank became one of the best in the country. At the height of her career, and afer designing thousands of ofce interiors, she resigned from Knoll in 1965. At only 48 years old, she had profoundly infuenced post–World War II design by defning the look for corporate interiors during the 1950s and 1960s and promoting the “open ofce” workspace. She is one of the most infuential architects and designers of post-war America, and she made designers like Saarinen and van der Rohe famous for their furniture—designs that are today considered classics (along with her own pieces)—and still being used in contemporary interiors. She had a curatorial eye for identifying talent and great works of art that she integrated both in her showrooms and in her homes. Shu was of the belief that art was to be lived with and enjoyed on a daily basis, rather than something kept hidden away in storage. Now, Phillips ofers the rare opportunity to share in the joy in the many memories that Shu experienced over an incredible life of art and design. When mid-century modern furniture was having a resurgence, she’d open up an auction catalogue with her furniture and her name in it, and jokingly say to me: “You know, Paul, I’m an antique now.” —Paul Makovsky, Critic and Curator Paul Makovsky is a writer based in New York City. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Contract Magazine, a publication dedicated to architecture and design. Makovsky has curated countless exhibitions about art and design, including “Knoll Textiles: 1945- 2010” at the Bard Graduate Center, and was a contributor to the accompanying catalogue published by Yale University Press. He was a close friend of Florence Knoll Bassett and is currently writing a biography of her life and work.
Paul Klee
The Titan of Modern Art
An artist who truly defned the 20th century, Paul Klee expanded the feld of art marking in ways that reverberate into the present day. As an artist, teacher, writer and thinker, Klee led the way for modernism through some of the most epochal moments of history – from World War I to the Weimar Republic, from the golden years of the Bauhaus to the Nazi era and World War II. Created between 1918 and 1935, the present grouping of works from the Collection of Florence Knoll Bassett capture the remarkable breadth, radical experimentation and inventiveness with which Klee pushed his practice into new creative heights throughout these tumultuous decades. Last known to have been exhibited in public nearly 100 years ago, Ostern from 1918 is an exquisite picture that perfectly encapsulates Klee’s distinctive graphic idiom. Klee, who once famously declared that “a drawing is simply a line going for a walk”, embraced an intentionally child-like style of drawing in constructing his fantastical symbolic worlds. The delicately drawn cross and lamb evidence Klee’s exploration of religious imagery at the time, a preoccupation begun around 1913 that would culminate most famously in Angelus Novus, 1920, which Walter Benjamin interpreted as “the angel of history” gazing at wreckage of the past. Klee created Ostern in the very year World War I was coming to a close, yet none of the epoch’s sufering and destruction surfaces in the poetic image. This sense of detachment is characteristic for Klee, who ofen kept an emotional distance to the harsh realities of his time. Klee had been an established member of the avant-garde group Der Paul Klee. Photographed by Tim Nighswander, Photo: Albers Foundation/Art Resource, NY
Blaue Reiter when the war broke out in 1914. He would come to lose fellow Der Blaue Reiter artists and friends August Macke and Franz Marc in battle while posted to airfelds behind the lines, but rather than address these harrowing experiences, Klee instead retreated into his mythical universes of pure line and color. Created in 1921 during the early Weimar Republic period, Der Exkaiser as such takes a unique position as one of the few works with which Klee explicitly addresses contemporaneous political events. In a body of work largely encompassing abstract landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, it is one of only fve works satirizing Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia who was abdicated shortly before Germany’s defeat in World War I. While Klee obliquely parodied fgures of power in a small number of other works too, Der Exkaiser is one of the few instances where Klee allowed for a strikingly close resemblance with the emperor, as seen in the pointed helmet fnial, mustache and Iron Cross. Despite the gravity of the subject matter, Klee embraces satire and humor as the means of expression for the modern age — an inheritance from his early years as a a satirical illustrator. Der Exkaiser is notably one of the few works in which Klee fuses social commentary with his early Bauhaus techniques, as evidenced in the luminous feld of orange and ochre rectangles. Created the very year he began teaching at the Bauhaus, it beautifully exhibits Klee’s increasing preoccupation with the interaction of colors.
Stoppelfeld, 1925, is a quintessential example from Klee’s Bauhaus period that perfectly captures the tension between fguration and abstraction at the heart of much of Klee’s work. While evocative of a feld, as the title suggests, the watercolor and ink composition also operates as an abstracted landscape teeming with symbols and beautifully demonstrates the central role of color and line in Klee’s picture theory. Klee would teach at the Bauhaus until 1931 when he moved to join the faculty of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, only to be removed from his position in 1933 when a Nazi newspaper denounced him as subversive and, erroneously, as Jewish. With the Nazis’ rise to power and fascism rearing its head, Klee returned to his native Switzerland where he would continue to create works such as Lucia even afer he began sufering from a debilitating illness in 1935. Executed in 1937, just three years prior to Klee’s death, Lucia belongs to a group of abstracted portraits characterized by a remarkable economy of line that speak to Klee’s dialogue with Pablo Picasso’s art. Making their way from Europe to esteemed New York gallerist Curt Valentin, who specialized in artists deemed to be “degenerate” by the Nazi regime, these key works were acquired by Florence Knoll Bassett and Hans Knoll in the early 1940s. Remaining in this revered collection for nearly 80 years, each example provides intriguing insights into key moments of Klee’s artistic practice. While characterized by a variety of subject matter and approach, together they capture the pioneering singular vision of one of the titans of modern art.
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133. Paul Klee
1879-1940
Der Exkaiser signed “Klee” lower right; titled, inscribed and dated “1921/14 Der Exkaiser” center of artist’s mount; further titled, inscribed and dated “1921/14 Der Exkaiser” on the reverse oil transfer, watercolor and gouache on paper laid on artist’s mount image 10 1/2 x 8 1/4 in. (26.7 x 21 cm.) overall including artist’s mount 14 3/8 x 11 1/4 in. (36.5 x 28.6 cm.) Executed in 1921. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Lily Klee, Bern (by 1940) Klee-Gesellschaf, Bern (by 1946) Curt Valentin (Buchholz Gallery), Berlin & New York (acquired by 1950) Acquired by Hans and Florence Knoll from the above in 1951 Literature Will Grohmann, Paul Klee, New York, 1954, no. 61, pp. 199, 413 (illustrated, p. 392) James Smith Pierce, Paul Klee and Primitive Art, New York, 1976, p. 166, note 42 Michèle Vishny, “Paul Klee and War: A Stance of Aloofness”, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, December 1978, pp. 238, 243, note 17 The Paul Klee Foundation, ed., Paul Klee: Catalogue Raisonné, 1919-1922, vol. 3, Bern, 1999, no. 2605, p. 263 (illustrated)
134. Paul Klee
1879-1940
Ostern signed “Klee” lower lef (faded) ink, graphite and watercolor on paper with partial artist’s mount 9 7/8 x 5 3/4 in. (25.1 x 14.6 cm.) Executed in 1918. Estimate $120,000-180,000 Provenance Hans Goltz (Galerie Neue Kunst), Munich Curt Valentin (Buchholz Gallery), Berlin & New York Acquired by Hans and Florence Knoll from the above circa 1944 Exhibited Berlin, Galerie der Sturm, Paul Klee, Johannes Molzahn, Kurt Schwitters, January 1919, no. 10 Berlin, Galerie der Sturm, Gesamtschau, 71. Ausstellung, February 1919, no. 36 Munich, Galeriestrasse 26, Muenchener Neue Secession, V. Austellung, June 1919, no. 83 Stuttgart, Kunstgebäude, Der Sturm und ÜechtGruppe, Zweite Herbstschau Neuer Kunst, 1920 Literature The Paul Klee Foundation, ed., Paul Klee: Catalogue Raisonné, Bern, 2000, vol. 2, no. 1883, p. 446 (illustrated) Johann Konrad Eberlein, “Angelus Novus”, Paul Klees Bild und Walter Benjamins Deutung, Freiburg, 2006, p. 51 Michael Baumgartner, Cathrin Klinsöhr-Leroy and Katja Schneider, eds., Franz Marc, Paul Klee. Dialog in Bildern, exh. cat., Franz Marc Museum, Kochel, 2010, p. 100 Uta Gerlach-Laxner, Paul Klee - Mythos Fliegen, exh. cat., H2 Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst, Augsburg, 2013, pp. 49, 50
“In an age of the colossus, Klee falls in love with a green leaf, a star, a butterfy’s wing. I know of no man more in touch with his inspiration than Paul Klee.” Hugo Ball
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135. Paul Klee
1879-1940
Stoppelfeld signed “Klee” lower lef; inscribed and dated “I 1925 „V.8.”” center lef of artist’s mount; titled “Stoppelfeld” center right of artist’s mount ink and watercolor on paper laid on artist’s mount image 9 3/8 x 11 7/8 in. (23.8 x 30.2 cm.) overall including artist’s mount 13 3/4 x 19 1/2 in. (34.9 x 49.5 cm.) Executed in 1925. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance Lily Klee, Bern (by 1940) Klee-Gesellschaf, Bern Curt Valentin (Buchholz Gallery), Berlin & New York (on consignment from the above by 1949) Acquired by Hans and Florence Knoll from the above in 1951 Exhibited Prague, Kunstverein für Böhmen, Künstlerhaus Rudolfnum-Parlament, Drei Ausstellungen: I. Jarsov Veris, Paris; Bilder und Zeichnungen; II. Paul Klee, München; 60 Aquarelle; III. Bernhard Reder, Rumänien, February 27 - March 14, 1926, no. 9 Literature The Paul Klee Foundation, ed., Paul Klee, Catalogue Raisonné, Bern, 2000, vol. 4, no. 3889, p. 383 (illustrated)
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136. Paul Klee
1879-1940
Lucia signed “Klee” lower lef; titled, inscribed and dated “1937 M6 Lucia” center of artist’s mount charcoal and paste on paste-primed paper laid on artist’s mount image 12 7/8 x 8 in. (32.7 x 20.3 cm.) overall including artist’s mount 17 1/4 x 11 7/8 in. (43.8 x 30.2 cm.) Executed in 1937. Estimate $70,000-100,000 Provenance Lily Klee, Bern (by 1940) Klee-Gesellschaf, Bern (by 1946) Curt Valentin (Buchholz Gallery), Berlin & New York (acquired from the above in 1950) Hans Knoll (acquired from the above) Acquired by Hans and Florence Knoll from the above in 1955 Exhibited New York, Buchholz Gallery, Curt Valentin, Klee. Sixty Unknown Drawings, January 16 - February 3, 1951, no. 55 Literature The Paul Klee Foundation, ed., Paul Klee, Catalogue Raisonné, Bern, 2003, vol. 7, no. 7002, p. 237 (illustrated)
137. Lyonel Feininger
1871-1956
In the Days of Sail signed, titled and dated “Feininger In the Days of Sail 1944” lower edge pen, ink and watercolor on paper 11 3/4 x 18 1/4 in. (29.8 x 46.4 cm.) Executed in 1944. Achim Moeller, Managing Principal of The Lyonel Feininger Project LLC, New York – Berlin has confrmed the authenticity of this work, which is registered under no. 161508-09-19. Estimate $20,000-30,000
Josef Albers
Remaining in the esteemed collection of Florence Knoll Bassett for over 60 years, this stellar group of paintings by Josef Albers encapsulates the rigorous exploration of form, material and color that has come to defne the artist’s infuential oeuvre. From Gay Desert, 19481953, to Homage to the Square: Silent Gray, 1955, and Homage to the Square: In Wide Light B, 1959, each of these works perfectly demonstrate the groundbreaking visual idiom developed by the artist, following his departure from the Bauhaus in Dessau and emigration to the United States in the 1930s. Spanning both the Variant/Adobe and Homage to the Square series, the three works together notably ofer a unique snapshot of one of the most crucial transitional moments of Albers’s career. Albers’s oeuvre is above all defned by his unparalleled exploration of color, an investigation that he started focusing on in depth for the frst time with his Variant/ Adobe series. Albers began this body of work in 1946 while staying in an adobe house in the New Mexico desert during his sabbatical from Black Mountain College, the series demonstrating a marked shif in Albers’s practice towards exploring color relationships within geometric forms. Gay Desert, whose sister painting resides in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, speaks to the impact of Albers’s frequent travels to New Mexico, and especially to Mexico. Albers painted Gay Desert between 1948 and 1953, when he and his wife Anni Albers were spending a considerable amount of time in Mexico. Both artists found a wealth of inspiration in the pre-Columbian artifacts and monuments, particularly as they pertained to the universality and enduring vitality of abstraction.
Josef Albers photographed at his retrospective at Yale University in New Haven, 1956. Photographed by Sybil Wilson, Artwork © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Gay Desert beautifully evokes the landscape and architecture that the Albers encountered as they travelled through the country, and underlines how, as Brenda Danilowitz argued, the palette of the Variant/ Adobe series is “unimaginable without the highly colored painted exterior walls of fat roofed Mexican houses” (Brenda Danilowitz, Josef Albers in Mexico, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2017, p. 17). Despite these associations, Albers ofen emphasized that his work was devoid of references to reality. Writing on the series, he instead emphasized the connection to music and the precision underlying his material process: “All Variants are built on an underlying checkerboard-like structure. This provides a defnite relationship of all parts and therefore unifcation of form. It also gives the time-space order comparable to the beat measure in music and perhaps also related to, ‘Division on a Ground’, the old musical term for ‘Variations’” (Josef Albers, “Variants: Measuring Color”, Josef Albers, Interaction, exh. cat., Villa Hügel, Essen, 2018, p. 149). This sustained exploration of color set the foundation for Albers’s iconic Homage to the Square paintings, which he would commence in 1950 at the age of 62 and dedicate himself to over the next 26 years until his death. Homage to the Square: Silent Gray and Homage to the
Square: In Wide Light B perfectly demonstrate how Albers embraced the square as a means to give form to color. Homage to the Square: Silent Gray from 1955 in particular stands out as an absolute museum-quality painting – exuding the sensual chromatic richness and compositional clarity of Albers’s best works. In his pursuit of submitting his practice to an even stricter economy of means, Alberses embraced a reductively systematic application of color: to create his precise squares, he would work entirely free-hand, applying paint directly from the tube with a palette knife and carefully recording the technical details of his materials on the reverse of each panel. This exacting material process provided Albers with a framework to explore the phenomenology of color. “The Homages,” as Jeannette Redensek summarized, “are about color, about the mutability of color relationships, and about the malleability of subjective perceptions of color” (Jeannette Redensek, Josef Albers, Interaction, exh. cat., Villa Hügel, Essen, 2018, p. 173). It is perhaps not surprising that Florence Knoll Bassett, the grande dame of modern design, felt a particular afnity for Albers’s pioneering aesthetic. A true visionary, she acquired these works from Sidney Janis shortly afer their respective creation, in the period between 1952 and 1962.
“All real art is or was modern in its time, Daring and new, Demonstrating a constant change in seeing and feeling.” Josef Albers
138. Josef Albers
1888-1976
Homage to the Square: Silent Gray signed with the artist’s monogram and dated “A 55” lower right; further signed, titled and dated “Homage to the Square: “Silent Gray” Albers 1955” on the reverse oil on Masonite 32 x 32 in. (81.3 x 81.3 cm.) Painted in 1955, 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 JAAF 1955.1.6. Estimate $400,000-600,000 Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1958 Exhibited New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Annual Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, Watercolors & Drawings, November 19, 1958 - January 4, 1959, no. 42
Josef Alber’s Homage to the Square: Silent Gray, 1955, in the ofce of Harry Hood Bassett at the First National Bank in Miami, Florida, ca. 1957. Courtesy Knoll Archive. Artwork © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
139. Josef Albers
1888-1976
Gay Desert signed with the artist’s monogram and dated “A 48-53” lower right; further signed, titled and dated ““Gay Desert” Albers 48-53” on the reverse oil on wood fber board overall 14 1/4 x 27 in. (36.2 x 68.6 cm.) sight 13 3/4 x 26 1/2 in. (34.9 x 67.3 cm.) Painted in 1948-1953, 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 JAAF 1948.1.24. Estimate $200,000-300,000 Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1956 Exhibited Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum, Josef & Anni Albers, Paintings, Tapestries & Woven Textiles, July 8 – August 2, 1953, no. 33, p. 6
Josef Albers, Uxmal, Edifce to lef of the stairway, north building of the Nunnery Quadrangle. The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, Photo: Albers Foundation/ Art Resource, NY, Artwork © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
140. Josef Albers
1888-1976
Homage to the Square: In Wide Light B signed with the artist’s monogram and dated “A 59” lower right; further signed, titled and dated “Study for Homage to the Square: “In Wide Light B” Albers 1959” on the reverse oil on Masonite, in artist’s chosen frame 18 x 18 in. (45.7 x 45.7 cm.) framed 30 x 30 in. (76.3 x 76.3 cm.) Painted in 1959, 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 JAAF 1959.1.47. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1962 Exhibited Raleigh, The North Carolina Museum of Art, Josef Albers, February 3 - March 11, 1962, no. 31, p. 36
141. Isamu Noguchi
1904-1988
Small Wonder African black pyrophyllite 9 1/4 x 12 1/8 x 1 3/8 in. (23.5 x 30.8 x 3.5 cm.) Executed in 1946. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Acquired by the present owner by 1959 Literature Diane Botnick and Nancy Grove, The Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi, 1924–1979: A Catalogue Raisonné, New York and London, 1980, p. 45 Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, The Isamu Noguchi Catalogue Raisonné, online, ongoing, no. 248
142. Victor Vasarely
1906-1997
CTA 102 signed “Vasarely.” lower right; further signed, titled and dated “Vasarely CTA-102 1965” on the reverse oil on canvas 62 7/8 x 62 7/8 in. (160 x 160 cm.) Painted in 1965. The authenticity of the present work has been confrmed by Pierre Vasarely, President of the Fondation Vasarely, universal legatee and the moral right holder of Victor Vasarely. This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné de l’Oeuvre Peint de Victor Vasarely, which is currently being compiled by the Fondation Vasarely, Aix-enProvence. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1965 Exhibited New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, An Exhibition of Recent Paintings by Vasarely, January 4 - February 5, 1966, no. 19, n.p. (illustrated)
143. Walter Leblanc
1932-1986
Torsions B.V. 9 signed, titled and dated “Walter LeBlanc Torsions B.V. 9 1964.” on the reverse polyvinyl on stretcher mounted on Masonite, in artist’s frame 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 in. (60 x 60 cm.) Executed in 1964, this work is registered in the archives of the Fondation Walter & Nicole Leblanc, Brussels, under no. 628. Estimate $10,000-15,000
Provenance The Artist La Biennale di Venezia Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1970 Exhibited Venice, Belgian Pavilion, XXXV Biennale Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia, June 24 October 25, 1970, no. IV, n.p. (illustrated) Literature Nicole Leblanc and Danielle Everarts de Velp Seynaeve, Walter Leblanc Catalogue Raisonné, Brussels, 1997, no. 628, p. 208 Nicole Leblanc, Danielle Everarts de Velp Seynaeve and Géraldine Chafk, Walter Leblanc, Addenda au catalogue raisonné II, Brussels, 2019, no. 628, p. 75 (illustrated)
144. Luis Tomasello
1915-2014
Atmosphère chromoplastique No 280 signed, titled, inscribed and dated “ATMOSPHERE CHROMOPLASTIQUE No 280 LUIS TOMASELLO 1971” on the stretcher acrylic on wood relief 37 3/8 x 37 3/8 x 2 3/8 in. (95 x 95 x 6 cm.) Executed in 1971. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Galerie Denise René, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1973
145. Francisco Narváez
1905-1982
Dos Volúmenes incised with the artist’s monogram and numbered “N 3/6” on the reverse bronze 10 7/8 x 14 7/8 x 7 1/2 in. (27.5 x 38 x 19 cm.) Executed circa 1976, this work is number 3 from an edition of 6, and is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issue by the Fundación Francisco Narváez. Estimate $8,000-12,000
Provenance Galería Arte/Contacto, Caracas Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1976 Exhibited Caracas, Galería Arte/Contacto, Narváez, Bronces Bruñido, May 9 – 23, 1976
146. Arnaldo Pomodoro
b. 1926
Radar, studio incised with the artist’s signature, number and date “Arnaldo Pomodoro ‘63 1/2” on the base polished bronze 26 1/2 x 23 1/2 x 8 3/8 in. (67.2 x 59.6 x 21.2 cm.) Executed in 1963, this work is number 1 from an series of 2 unique variants. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Marlborough Galleria d’Arte, Rome Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1970
Exhibited Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Arnaldo e Giò Pomodoro, February 22 - March 16, 1963 Literature Gabriele Mazzotta, ed., Libro per le sculture di Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, 1974, p. 129 (illustrated) Flamino Gualdoni, Arnaldo Pomodoro a Varese, exh. cat., Rettorato dell’Università, Castello di Masnago, Varese, 1998, p. 24 Flamino Gualdoni, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Catalogo ragionato della scultura, Milan, 2007, no. 285b, p. 475 (illustrated)
Charles Demuth
An American Master
“Search the history of American art and you will discover few watercolors more beautiful than those of Charles Demuth.” Ken Johnson, The New York Times
Charles Demuth, Red Gladioli, 1928. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York on the bequest of Mr. and Mrs. Laurance S. Rockefeller in honor of Tom Armstrong © Whitney Museum of American Art/Licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY
Held in the revered collection of Margaret V. and Samuel A. Lewisohn, Charles Demuth’s Tulips and Daylilies are exquisite watercolors presenting the artist’s celebrated depictions of the foral still life. Beautifully rendered with precise lines, angular forms and vivid red, green and yellow hues, both encapsulates the Precisionist style that Demuth pioneered in the early 20th century. Using a washand-blotter technique, Demuth imbues the scenes with rich texture – here beautifully conveying the efects of shadow and light. Executed in 1918 and 1924, respectively, these works were created at the height of Demuth’s career, for it was in 1923 that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York added one of his works to their collection. While living in his native Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for most of his life, Demuth was well-established within the world of modern art, and frequently traveled to Europe and New York. Studying in Paris, he was notably absorbed into the avant-garde scene, meeting Marsden Hartley, through whom he would later meet Alfred Stieglitz and become a core member of Stieglitz’s circle of American Modernists. Together with Charles Sheeler and his friend and contemporary Georgia O’Keefe – who would later inherit much of Demuth’s estate – he notably developed the quasiCubist art movement of Precisionism. Similar to O’Keefe, Demuth focused with vigor on fowers and vegetation, yet he sought to strip his favored motif of fowers down to geometric, angular shapes.
“Search the history of American art,” wrote Ken Johnson in The New York Times, “and you will discover few watercolors more beautiful than those of Charles Demuth“ (Ken Johnson, “A Watercolorist Who Turned His Hand to Oils of Heroic Vision”, The New York Times, February 27, 2008, online). Indeed, while Demuth frequently explored industrial and urban architectural motifs, his legacy is perhaps above all defned by remarkable depictions of the lavish garden surrounding his home in Lancaster. Tulips exemplifes how Demuth began to increasingly probe the spatial possibilities of his watercolor still lifes in the 1920s. Increasingly isolating his compositions against a white background, Demuth cast the negative white space of the paper as a compositional element. As Emily Farnham observed of his use of the white ground, “It was notably in his watercolor still lifes that he habitually placed exquisitely delineated positive objects (peaches, eggplant, striped kitchen towels) against a luminous unpainted ground. This device has reappeared during the sixties in the works of Californian [Wayne] Thiebaud, who employs pure white grounds behind relief-like human fgures as means toward the psychological and technical isolation of his subjects” (Emily Farnham, Charles Demuth: Behind a Laughing Mask, Norman, 1971, p. 185).
147. Charles Demuth
1883-1935
Tulips signed and dated “C. Demuth 1924� lower center watercolor and graphite on paper 17 7/8 x 11 7/8 in. (45.7 x 30.3 cm.) Executed in 1924. Estimate $150,000-250,000 Provenance Margaret V. and Samuel A. Lewisohn, New York Thence by descent to the present owner
148. Charles Demuth
1883-1935
Daylilies signed and dated “C. Demuth. 1918� lower lef watercolor and graphite on paper 17 7/8 x 11 7/8 in. (45.5 x 30.3 cm.) Executed in 1918. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance Margaret V. and Samuel A. Lewisohn, New York Thence by descent to the present owner
Property of an Important New York Collector
149. John Marin
1870-1953
Wave and Rock signed and dated “Marin 34” lower right watercolor on paper 15 3/8 x 20 5/8 in. (39.1 x 52.4 cm.) Executed in 1934. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance An American Place, New York Stendahl Galleries, Los Angeles Charlotte Mack, San Francisco San Francisco Museum of Art (gifed by the above in 1953) Christie’s, New York, March 15, 1985, lot 268 Irving Galleries, Palm Beach Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, An American Place, John Marin, Exhibition of Water Colors, Drawings, Oils (1934 - 1935), October 27 December 15, 1935, no. 6 New York, The Museum of Modern Art, John Marin, Watercolors, Oil Paintings, Etchings, October 19November 22, 1936, no. 156, p. 74
San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, John Marin: Oils, Watercolors, Etchings, February 15 June 12, 1949, no. 28 Tucson, The University of Arizona Art Gallery, John Marin, 1870-1953, February 9 - March 10, 1963, no. 58, n.p. (illustrated) La Jolla Museum of Art, Paintings by Marsden Hartley, John Marin, February 12 - March 27, 1966, no. 26 Evanston, Terra Museum of American Art, Solitude, Inner Vision in America, September 25 - December 30, 1982, no. 26, p. 18 (illustrated) New York, Debra Force Fine Art, Japanism in American Art, May 1 - June 13, 2003 Literature Frances Melanie Obst, Art and Design in Home Living, New York, 1963, p. 266 (illustrated) Sheldon Reich, John Marin, A Stylistic Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, Tucson, 1970, no. 34.31, p. 665 (illustrated) Catalog of the Permanent Collection of Painting and Sculpture, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, 1970, p. 105
Property from a Boise Collection
150. Georgia O’Keefe
1887-1986
Red and Green III watercolor on wove paper 11 3/4 x 8 7/8 in. (30 x 22.5 cm.) Executed in 1916. Estimate $30,000-50,000 Provenance The Downtown Gallery, New York Edith Gregor Halpert, New York Private Collection, New York (thence by descent from the above) Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1999 Exhibited New York, The Downtown Gallery, O’Keefe, Watercolors 1916 - 1917, February 25 – March 22, 1958 Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, A Loan Exhibition From The Edith Gregor Halpert Collection, January 16 – February 28, 1960, no. 58, p. 9 Clinton, The Edward W. Root Art Center, Hamilton College; Utica, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Selections from the Edith Gregor Halpert Collection, November 13 – December 17, 1960, no. 19 Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Edith Gregor Halpert Collection, September 28 – November 11, 1962, p. 5 London, The Leicester Galleries, Six Decades of American Art, July 14 – August 18, 1965, no. 50, p. 37 Literature Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O’Keefe, Catalogue Raisonné, Volume One, New Haven, 1999, no. 86, p. 66 (illustrated)
Property from an Important Private Collection, Florida
151. Salvador Dalí
1904-1989
Vénus à la girafe incised with the artist’s signature and number “Salvador Dalí 5/6” and stamped with the Venturi Arte Foundry mark on the base bronze with brown patina 61 3/8 x 9 x 26 3/8 in. (156 x 23 x 67 cm.) Executed in 1973, this work is number 5 from an edition of 6 and is accompanied by a photo-certifcate of authenticity issued by Venturi Arte. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Bo Ling Cheng Fine Arts, Rolly-Michaux & New York Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1985) Thence by descent to the present owner Exhibited Venice, Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte, La Biennale di Venezia XLI, June 10-September 9, 1984, p. 42 (illustrated) Ferrara, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, I Dali di Salvador Dali, July 1-September 30, 1984, no. 263, p. 94 (another example exhibited and illustrated, p. 345) Chateau de Vascoeuil, Salvador Dalí, July 1 October 21, 2001, n.p. (another example exhibited and illustrated) Literature Robert and Nicolas Descharnes, Dalí, The Hard and The Sof, Spells for the Magic of Form, Sculptures & Objects, Azay-le-Rideau, 2004, no. 69, p. 37 (another example illustrated)
Property from an Important Private Collection, Florida
152. Niki de Saint Phalle
1930-2002
Unicorn signed “Niki de Saint Phalle” on the unicorn’s rear; incised “3/8” and the Haligon foundry mark on the unicorn’s back right leg painted polyester resin 40 1/8 x 57 1/8 x 13 5/8 in. (102 x 145 x 34.5 cm.) Executed in 1994, this work is number 3 from an edition of 8 plus 4 artist’s proofs and one original sculpture. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Private Collection, New York Rachel Adler Fine Arts, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1999
Property from an Important Private Collector O
153. William Baziotes
1912-1963
Untitled oil on canvas 48 1/4 x 61 7/8 in. (122.4 x 157.2 cm.) Painted in 1962, this work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by Michael Preble in cooperation with the Ethel Baziotes Estate. This work is accompanied by a letter from Ethel Baziotes confrming that this is the last painting the artist ever painted. Estimate $300,000-400,000
Provenance Marlborough Gallery, New York Blum Helman Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Marlborough Gallery, William Baziotes, Late Work 1946-1962, February - March 1971, no. 24, p. 11 Newport Beach, Newport Harbor Museum; Austin, University of Texas; College Park, University of Maryland Art Gallery, Ithaca, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, William Baziotes: A Retrospective Exhibition, March 24 December 10, 1978, no. 36, p. 114 (illustrated) Howland, The Butler Institute of American Art, William Baziotes: The Poetic Spirit, November 19, 2000 - January 7, 2001, n.p. (illustrated)
“It is the mysterious that I love in painting. It is the stillness and the silence. I want my pictures to take efect very slowly, to obsess and to haunt.” William Baziotes
Drawing the viewer into William Baziotes’ poetic realm of pure color and form, Untitled, 1962, is a beautiful example of the distinct painterly idiom of “biomorphic abstraction” the artist pursued up to the last years of his life. Sufused with references to both the knowable and unknowable world, it is paradigmatic of the atmospheric works Baziotes had begun creating since the early 1950s. The delicate, semi-translucent surface is the result of the artist’s increased elimination of brushwork, his process of repeatedly rubbing oil paint into the surface to achieve a sof, dream-like feld reminiscent of Mark Rothko’s psychologically charged canvases. While sharing Rothko’s pursuit of a deeper, primordial spiritual truth through painting, Baziotes importantly retained a deep-seated commitment to the fgure, as evidenced in the biomorphic shapes which are suspended across the canvas, obliquely referencing the organic realm. As with Dusk, 1958, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Baziotes presents us with a painterly, Baudelairian landscape where association and allusion rule, and stillness abounds with ethereal aferefect. Baziotes painted Untitled as the last painting before his premature passing at merely ffy years of age. At the time, Baziotes had established a reputation as one of
the leading abstract painters of his generation – having emerged as one of the core members of the pioneering artist group The Ten along with Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko in the mid 1930s, and exhibiting at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century in the 1940s. And yet, as artist Carroll Dunham observed, “Baziotes has been somewhat eclipsed in that story [of Abstract Expressionism], although he was a central participant in the signifcant organizations, events, and broadsides that gave the downtown art scene its frst feelings of traction. He developed under the same basic infuences as his cohort, but his sensibility was always a little of in relation to the main currents of the time, remained close both to his Surrealist roots and to prewar American modernist painting, uninterested in the large scale and transparent approach to process that now defne the period in which he was most active. As he developed, he explored a diferent kind of transparency, with an atmospheric touch that can seem to foreshadow artists like Olitski and…‘lyrical abstractionists’ of the later ’60s” (Carroll Dunham, “Close Up”, Artforum, Summer 2011, online). Bridging Surrealist automatism with color feld painting, Baziotes’ psychologically charged canvases speak of the individualistic style that the artist pursued with unwavering commitment until the end of his career.
154. Louise Bourgeois
1911-2010
Untitled signed “Bourgeois” lower right ink on paper 9 1/2 x 15 5/8 in. (24.1 x 39.7 cm.) Executed in 1951. Estimate $70,000-100,000 Provenance The Artist Robert Miller Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1995 Exhibited New York, The Museum of Modern Art; Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Louise Bourgeois, November 3, 1982 - January 5, 1984, no. 93, p. 121 (illustrated, p. 73) Amsterdam, Museum Overholland, Louise Bourgeois: Works on Paper 1939-1988, October 22 December 31, 1988 Paris, Galerie Lelong, Louise Bourgeois: Dessins 19401986, February 19 - March 25, 1989 Cologne, Monika Sprüth Galerie, Louise Bourgeois Skulpturen und Zeichnungen, November 16, 1990 January 19, 1991 Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Louise Bourgeois, July 8 - September 4, 1994
To fully understand the personal nature of Louise Bourgeois’s extensive practice, it is important to study not only the artist’s famous large-scale bronze and steel sculptures, but also her mastery of mediums beyond the three-dimensional, specifcally in drawing. Executed in 1951, Untitled is an exquisite example of Bourgeois’s draughtsmanship, which was recently the subject of The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait in 2017-2018. If Bourgeois’s sculptures went largely unnoticed until the late 1970s, her drawings were even more clandestine in nature, neither published nor exhibited until a full ten years later. Untitled was included in two of the seminal exhibitions that defned the scope and signifcance of Bourgeois’ drawings, namely the exhibition Louise Bourgeois, which traveled from The Museum of Modern Art in New York, to the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago between 1982 and 1984, as well as Louise Bourgeois: Works on Paper 1939-1988 at the Museum Overholland, Amsterdam, in 1988. Bourgeois’s early drawings from the 1940s and 1950s were largely based on memories from her childhood. Born in Paris to parents who restored Renaissance tapestries, she was fascinated by the surrounding draped fabrics adorned with plant and foral designs. These feather-like motifs are evident in Untitled, meditatively drawn in hatched lines, varying in density, which in turn create the illusion of light and shadow. As the artist herself stated, “everything is feeting, but your drawing will serve as a reminder; otherwise it is forgotten” (Louise Bourgeois, quoted in Louise Bourgeois: Drawings & Observations, exh. cat., University Art Museum, Berkeley, 1995, p. 21).
Exhibition view of the present lot at the exhibition Louise Bourgeois, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 3, 1982–February 8, 1983. Photographic Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. IN1337.8. Photograph by Katherine Keller.
155. Franz Kline
1910-1962
Study for Harleman signed “KLINE” lower right ink on paper mounted on cardboard 8 1/8 x 13 5/8 in. (20.5 x 34.5 cm.) Executed in 1960. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Matthew Marks Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Matthew Marks Gallery; San Francisco, Fraenkel Gallery, Open Secrets: Seventy Pictures on Paper 1815 to the Present, November 19 March 1, 1997, no. 37
Franz Kline, Harleman, 1960. © The Franz Kline Estate/Artists Right Society (ARS), New York.
Property from a Distinguished California Collection
156. Robert Motherwell
1915-1991
Open No. 116: La France Open incised with the artist’s initials and date “RM 69” upper center; further signed, titled, and dated ““OPEN #116” R. Motherwell Summer, 1969 “La France Open”” on the reverse acrylic and charcoal on canvas 72 x 42 in. (182.9 x 106.7 cm.) Executed in 1969/1983/circa 1985. Estimate $1,000,000-1,500,000 Provenance Dedalus Foundation, New York Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2006 Exhibited New York, Knoedler & Company, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, David Smith, December 7, 1983 January 14, 1984, no. 17 Los Angeles, Manny Silverman Gallery, Winter Group Exhibition, January 2006, no. 7 Literature Jack Flam, Katy Rogers and Tim Cliford, Robert Motherwell: Paintings and Collages, A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941-1991, vol. 2, New Haven, 2012, no. 1105, pp. 529-530 (illustrated, p. 530)
Robert Motherwell
Open No. 116: La France Open, 1969/1983/circa 1985
Resplendent in color and gesture, Robert Motherwell’s Open No. 116: La France Open envelops the viewer in an atmospheric blue feld of color anchored by a luminous white window-like form outlined in bold black lines. As one approaches the vast surface, hints of green, ultramarine blue, sienna and red begin to reveal themselves behind the veils of pale blue and white paint that Motherwell has gesturally applied in subtle, ofentimes semitransparent layers. Completed between 1983 and 1985, this work is the impressive result of over a decade and a half of constant re-working of the canvas: Motherwell began painting the work in 1969, initially conceived it as Open No. 116: In Sienna, Blue and Green, but over the years repeatedly revised the canvas until achieving its current, fnal state. Exemplary of Motherwell’s characteristic process of revision, this painting hence simultaneously exhibits elements of his early Opens, as well as the looser, more gestural style that Motherwell pursued in the last decade of his life in the 1980s. An ode to the color blue, Open No. 116: La France Open represents a striking continuation of Motherwell’s celebrated The Blue Painting Lesson paintings from 1973-1975, which reside in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, in Hartford. Encountering Open No. 116: La France Open is to experience an overwhelming sense of contemplation and Zen-like harmony that is wholly unique to Motherwell’s Open series. The Opens represented a major shif from the gestural brushstrokes and stark black and white of Motherwell’s preceding Elegies, an ongoing series begun in the late 1940s. If the Elegies were frequently imbued with undertones of tragedy and sufering, works such as the present example refect
the opposite spectrum of Motherwell’s sensibility. As Motherwell himself observed, “There is more emphasis on ‘feeling’ + less on ‘emotion.’ The ‘Open’ series is less aggressive than my older paintings” (Robert Motherwell, quoted in Irmeline Lebeer, “Robert Motherwell (Entretien avec l’artiste)”, Chroniques de Van vivant, no. 22, July-August 1971, n.p.). The immediate origins of the Open series were inspired by chance when Motherwell was working in his studio in 1967. Struck by the relationship that resulted from leaning a smaller canvas against a larger one, he outlined the smaller canvas in charcoal on the larger one. According to Motherwell, “The series began as a ‘door’”, which he “ultimately reversed into a ‘window’” (Robert Motherwell, “Statement of the Open Series”, 1969, in Dore Ashton, ed., The Writings of Robert Motherwell, Berkeley, 2007, p. 244). That the frst such Open painting was borne from a chance episode was not surprising for an artist such as Motherwell, who since his early contact with Surrealism held a frm belief in the generative potential of chance, memory and imagination. Less immediately apparent to Motherwell, however, was that the theme of the window had already fgured earlier in his career – a fact he realized more than a year afer painting his frst Opens upon rediscovering his Spanish Picture with Window, 1941, now in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Opens also reveal Motherwell’s engagement with the art historical motif of the window, likely prompted by his frst in-person encounter with Henri Matisse’s highly abstracted Porte-fenêtre à Collioure, 1914, and the View of Notre Dame, 1914, at The Museum of
“The relationship between some of the Opens and Matisse’s View of Notre Dame is striking, in terms of dialogue between drawn line and loosely brushed feld of color, and even in the way the exquisite brushstroke in the ground is able to call forth so much luminosity and so much chromatic richness from the blues.” Jack Flam
Henri Matisse, View of Notre Dame, 1914. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, and the Henry Ittleson, A. Conger Goodyear, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Sinclair Funds, and the Anna Erickson Levene Bequest given in memory of her husband, Dr. Phoebus Aaron Theodor Levene, Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/ Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Robert Motherwell, The Blue Painting Lesson: A Study in Painterly Logic, 1973–1975. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Artwork © 2019 Dedalus Foundation, Inc./Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Modern Art’s 1966 retrospective of the Fauve master. As Jack Flam indeed observed, “The relationship between some of the Opens and Matisse’s View of Notre Dame is striking, in terms of dialogue between drawn line and loosely brushed feld of color, and even in the way the exquisite brushstroke in the ground is able to call forth so much luminosity and so much chromatic richness from the blues” (Jack Flam, in, Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941 – 1991, vol. 1, New Haven, 2012, p. 134). Though many of Motherwell’s Opens have naturalistic points of reference and ofen evoke the image of a window against a wall, the artist emphasized that the motif of the window mainly represented a poetic
metaphor to him. It is indeed illuminating that Motherwell ultimately chose to title the series “Open” rather than “Windows,” which he had been considering up until early 1969. Skimming through his copy of the Random House Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language for new prompts and associations, Motherwell was intrigued by the conceptual breadth and ambiguity of the myriad of defnitions for the word “open”. Echoing Stéphane Mallarmé’s belief that a poem should transcend a specifc entity, idea, or event, Motherwell strove to create open-ended paintings. His paintings are neither meant as direct correspondences to the real world, nor are they exemplary of abstraction as an end in itself. Rather, they are meant to convey “felt content,” which in relation to the Opens Motherwell described as “colorful and sensuous, and in
“. . .each brush stroke is a decision. It is not only a decision of aesthetics—will this look more beautiful? —but a decision that concerns one’s inner I.” Robert Motherwell
spatial depth” (Robert Motherwell, “Statement of the ‘Open’ Series”, 1969, in Dore Ashton, ed., The Writings of Robert Motherwell, Berkeley, 2007, pp. 123-124).
– but a decision that concerns one’s inner I” (Robert Motherwell, quoted in Robert Motherwell, exh. cat., Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Bufalo, 1983, pp. 12–13).
Open No. 116: La France Open is a remarkable example of how revision and re-painting formed a core part of Motherwell’s artistic process. The frst version of this painting featured a sienna, blue and green composition and as such was titled Open No. 116: In Sienna, Blue and Green when it was consigned to MarlboroughGerson Gallery in New York. By the time it was exhibited at Knoelder & Company in 1983, however, Motherwell had radically re-painted it – transforming it into a predominantly blue painting with a red Open form and titling it Open No. 116: La France Open. The work clearly held such signifcance to Motherwell that he revised it still one more time – painting the rectangular Open form white – to achieve his current composition. This form of constant re-working was a long-standing practice for Motherwell, who once stated, “…each brush stroke is a decision. It is not only a decision of aesthetics – will this look more beautiful?
This constant process or revision, rather than being a matter of perfectionism, has been likened to an elusive attempt to fnd himself through the very act painting. Indeed, as Motherwell declared speaking of his tendency to re-paint works, “I realize that whatever ‘meaning’ that picture has is just the accumulated ‘meaning’ of ten thousand brush strokes, each one being decided as it was painted. In that sense, to ask what ‘what does this painting mean?’ is essentially unanswerable, except as the accumulation of hundreds of decisions with the brush. On a single day, or during a few hours, I might be in a very particular state, and make something much lighter, much heavier… than I normally would. But when you steadily work at something over a period of time, your whole being must emerge” (Robert Motherwell, quoted in Jack Flam et al., in Robert Motherwell, exh. cat., AlbrightKnox Art Gallery, Bufalo, 1983, pp. 12–13).
“What you forget and rediscover in a painting is the experience of light. You don’t remember light. . . short term you think you do; long term there’s no remembrance of light. You don’t carry light around with you in your head as a memory the way we do other things. It’s always fresh.” Larry Poons
Property from a Distinguished European Collection
157. Larry Poons
b. 1937
Jessica’s Hartford signed, titled and dated “JESSICA’S HARTFORD 1965 L. Poons” on the stretcher acrylic on canvas 80 x 128 1/4 in. (203.2 x 325.8 cm.) Painted in 1965, this work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings currently being prepared by the Larry Poons Studio. This work has been exhibited in both vertical and horizontal orientation. Estimate $800,000-1,200,000 Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Mr. & Mrs. Robert B. Mayer, Chicago (acquired from the above in March 1966) Sotheby’s, New York, November 9, 1989, lot 335 Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, Inc., New York, Beverly Hills & Berlin (acquired by 1990) Sotheby’s, New York, May 3, 1995, lot 169 PaceWildenstein, New York Private Collection, New York Phillips, New York, May 14, 2015, lot 39 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Exhibited Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 30th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, February 24 – April 19, 1967, no. 70, n.p. (exhibited with vertical orientation) Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Selections from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Mayer, July 13 - September 8, 1968, no. 55 (exhibited in horizontal orientation) New York, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, Inc., Larry Poons, Paintings 1963-1990, April 3 - 30, 1990, no. 2, p. 112 (exhibited and illustrated in vertical orientation, p. 25) New York, Jacobson Howard Gallery, Classic Works from the 1960s, December 3, 2003 – January 26, 2004 (exhibited in vertical orientation) New York, Loretta Howard Gallery, Larry Poons: Geometry and Dots, November 7 – December 14, 2013 (exhibited in horizontal orientation) Literature Archie Rand, “Archaeologist”, Arts Magazine, January 1991, vol. 65, no. 5, p. 53 (illustrated in horizontal orientation) Lloyd Wise, “Larry Poons”, Artforum, February 2014, p. 214 (illustrated in horizontal orientation)
Larry Poons
Jessica’s Hartford, 1965
Drawing the viewer into a pulsating feld of expansive color and light, Larry Poons’s monumental Jessica’s Hartford, 1965, is a seminal example of the iconic Dots paintings with which the artist was catapulted to fame in the mid-1960s. Expanding upon the rigorous play of color and optic sensations frst explored in such paintings as Night on Cold Mountain, 1962, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Orange Crush, 1963, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Bufalo, Poons here explores a looser idiom as he sets orange, lavender, pale blue and mint green circles and ellipses against the monochromatic chartreuse ground. Irregularly positioned atop the canvas, the dots seem to engage in a sort of dance within a feld of pure color. The subtle, at times barely noticeable contrasts in color result in a remarkable fickering efect that seems to re-invent the conceptual tenets of Pointillism within
the language of abstraction for the modern age. Distinguished by its exceptional provenance, Jessica’s Hartford was acquired shortly afer its execution by the esteemed art collectors and philanthropists Robert and Beatrice Mayer, co-founders of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago who amassed one of the best contemporary art collections in the United States. Painted in 1965, Jessica’s Hartford was created in the very breakthrough year that catapulted Poons to fame. Having received his frst solo exhibition at Green Gallery two years prior, in 1965 Poons, along with Josef Albers, Larry Bell, Ellsworth Kelly and Ad Reinhardt, was among the artists selected for The Museum of Modern Art’s defning exhibition The Responsive Eye, which explored diferent artistic investigations of perception and optical movement. Four years later, in
Lef to right: Larry Poons, circa 1965. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Photo Bridgeman Images. Detail of the present work
1969, Poons would be included in Henry Geldzahler’s landmark survey exhibition New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Within this exhibition, which comprised such stalwarts as Ad Reinhardt, Robert Motherwell and Ellsworth Kelly, the 33 year-old Poons was notably the youngest participant. While early critical reception of these works tied Poons to a variety of movements, specifcally Op Art, as well as Color Field painting and Minimalism, the artist sought to distance himself from such categorizations. Avoiding the emerging Op Art movement in particular, Poons emphasized that the optical efects of his paintings were simply unintended consequences of his painterly abstractions. Seeking to disrupt the purported purity of the monochrome, Poons created rhythmic compositions that engaged much more in a dialogue with the geometric abstractions of Piet Mondrian. Echoing the pulsing rhythm and optical vibration of Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-1943, Jessica’s Hartford evidences Poons’s rejection of a central composition. Poons painted each dot with remarkable care and consideration; though from afar appearing to fall like confetti across the surface, not one dot collides in this masterful orchestration of pure form and color. Upon close inspection, one can see the precision with which the
Larry Poons, Night on Cold Mountain, 1962. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Artwork © 2019 Larry Poons/Liscenced by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
composition was planned, manifested in razor sharp pencil lines which run both diagonally and vertically beneath the paint layer. Further recalling Mondrian’s masterwork, Poons’ system subtly imbues the composition of Jessica’s Hartford with a methodical underlying order. Poons, who studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and audited John Cage’s experimental composition course at the New School in the mid to late 1950s, inserts a pictorial musicality into his work. “By the time of his celebrated ‘Dots’ paintings… structural musicality has become so ingrained that it can make do with what seems to be the sparest means,” Barry Schwabsky observed. “Few paintings can be at once austere, and richly sensual, as Poons’s works of the sixties” (Barry Schwabsky, “Larry Poons: Musicality”, in Larry Poons, exh. cat., Yares Art, New York, 2017, p. 7). Poons’s formal framework functions akin to a musical score: while each painting is based on a predetermined formal structure, the underlying matrix ofers a loose constraint to determine the placement of each dot. While each dot touches one of the grid’s lines, their specifc spacing is irregular and intuitive – each functioning as an individual “tone”, while simultaneously coalescing into an overall chromatic symphony. While the decentralized, all-over composition in the present work allows for variable orientation, Jessica’s Hartford is perhaps strongest in a horizontal format, a favored structure within Poons’s broader oeuvre, and one that obliquely connects his abstractions to the mode of landscape painting. Sufused in shades of yellow, Jessica’s Hartford indeed seems to catch the light in a manner that is evocative of Claude Monet’s abstracted landscapes of waterlilies. It is no coincidence that Patti Smith once lauded Poons as “our cowboy Monet” in the 1970s. Poons created his Dots paintings only for a short period between 1963 and 1967, before steering his practice towards gestural abstraction, making Jessica’s Hartford an important early painting within Poons’s oeuvre that beautifully captures light, rhythm and color in a manner that seems to expand beyond the confnes of the canvas.
158. Jean-Paul Riopelle
1923-2002
Port Coton signed “Riopelle” lower lef oil on canvas 51 1/8 x 63 3/4 in. (130 x 162 cm.) Painted circa 1959. Estimate $600,000-800,000 Provenance Galerie Jacques Dubourg, Paris Blanchet & Joron-Derem, Drouot Richelieu, Paris, November 19, 2001, lot 69 Private Collection Miriam Shiell Fine Art, Toronto Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Toronto, Loch Gallery, Spring Historic Exhibition, May 15-June 22, 2014 Literature Yseult Riopelle, ed., Jean-Paul Riopelle, Catalogue raisonné, Tome 2, 1954-1959, Montreal, 2004, no. 1959.058H.V1959, p. 330 (illustrated)
Jean-Paul Riopelle Port Coton, circa 1959
A luscious and early example of Jean-Paul Riopelle’s non-representational landscape paintings, Port Coton, circa 1959, transforms color into real, tangible form. The blocky and jagged delineations dominating the composition, bristling with oceanic hues and earthy tones, evoke the eponymous rock formations adorning the shore of Belle-Île, just below the coast of Brittany. With its famed tempestuous and dramatic setting, the storm-swept island inspired a number of painters including Claude Monet and Henri Matisse, amounting, namely, to Monet’s seminal The Rocks at Belle-Ile, 1886, now residing in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. This earlier painting, preceding the present work by nearly a century, feels like a stunning point of departure from which to envisage Riopelle’s contemporary, abstract interpretation, rendered with a deeply physical approach, and oscillating between the painterly and the sculptural. Created on the heels of Riopelle’s major solo exhibition which took place at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, and immediately following his reception of the prestigious Guggenheim International Award, both bestowed in 1958, Port Coton encapsulates the artist’s revered aesthetic and technique at the height of his creative powers.
Having split his life between Canada and France, Riopelle was a native in the former and an adopted child of the latter, ofen conjoining visions of both in his animated painterly surfaces. Upon moving to Paris in 1946, he befriended such eminent fgures as Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Samuel Beckett, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Joan Mitchell, who later became his wife. Immediately engrossed with Riopelle’s work, Breton made several attempts to convince him to adhere to the Surrealist group. “To me, this is the art of a superior trapper,” he had afrmed (André Breton, quoted in Jean-Louis Prat, “We Only Make One Step in Life”, in Riopelle: Grand Format, exh. cat., Acquavella Galleries, New York, 2009, p. 22). Yet Riopelle had no intention of associating with the group; instead, he wished to create an oeuvre entirely unique and disconnected from any principles tied to existing artistic movements. “By renouncing all perfectible images, he translated the immediacy of his feelings, letting them pour forth with a degree of force and coherence rarely seen before,” wrote Jean-Louis Prat. “All that mattered was swifness, being in the necessity of the action” (Jean-Louis Prat, Riopelle: Grand Format, exh. cat., Acquavella Galleries, New York, 2009, p. 21). Turning away from Riopelle’s tight splatters of the late 1940s and early 1950s, which had earned him a comparison to the American titan Jackson Pollock, the Franco-Canadian artist instead veered towards a structure more blocky, tangible and evocative in the mid to late 1950s, which would preface his “abstract landscapism” of the 1960s. The present work defly exemplifes this watershed moment in his practice; the quick, sharp strokes that conjure the thickly worked surface demonstrate his prodigious use of palette knives, trowels, and spatulas, as well as his adroit dashes of paint onto the canvas, to arouse the landscape elucidated in the work’s title. With its luxurious impasto, Port Coton echoes the turbulent waves crashing against the port’s shore. The passages
Lef: Claude Monet, The Rocks at Belle-Ile (Pyramides de PortCoton, Mer sauvage), 1886. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, HIP/Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2019 Estate of Jean-Paul Riopelle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOCAN, Montreal Opposite: Jean-Paul Riopelle in his studio, 1953. Photographed by Denise Colomb. Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimone, Charenton-le-Pont © Ministère de la Culture/ Médiathèque du Patrimoine, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2019 Estate of Jean-Paul Riopelle/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOCAN, Montreal
of white in the composition recall the white sea foam surrounding the port, aptly named afer the cotton that froths, here around the rock stacks during a storm. Throughout the surface, there are instances of surrealism, abstraction and automatism: all styles that Riopelle experimented with over the course of his practice. Additionally, Joan Mitchell’s colorful, compact swathes are brought to mind, traversing the surface of the canvas with similar vehemence. Notably, Port Coton coincides with the beginning of their romantic companionship, which would continue to infuence both artists’ pictorial outputs until Mitchell’s death in 1979 and Riopelle’s ensuing abandonment of painting. By the mid to late 1950s, Riopelle was at his peak – his understanding of the application of paint and the diversity of sources for his inspiration, here most specifcally alluding to Port Coton, produced his most celebrated body of work in the years running up to his prolifc 1960s output. The amalgamation of visual references here translates directly on canvas through the layering of paint and the coexistence of varying textures. “If art lovers and art experts feel admiration, emotion and pleasure for Riopelle’s oil paintings, it is largely because of their materiality,” wrote Marie-Claude Corbeil. “Volume, color, glossiness and mattness all contribute to create a harmonious whole” (MarieClaude Corbeil, “Considerations regarding Riopelle’s pictorial technique and conservation”, in Jean-Paul Riopelle: Catalogue raisonné, Tome 2, 1954-1959, Montreal, 2004, p. 25).
159. Theodoros Stamos
1922-1997
Grand White Sun-Box signed, titled and dated “Stamos Grand White Sun-Box 1964-65” on the stretcher oil on canvas 71 7/8 x 84 in. (182.6 x 213.4 cm.) Painted in 1964-1965. Estimate $80,000-120,000
Provenance André Emmerich Gallery, New York Private Collection, Florida (acquired from the above circa 1970) Thence by descent to the present owner
160. Richard Pousette-Dart
1916-1992
Untitled signed “Richard Pousette-Dart� on the reverse oil on canvas 14 1/8 x 12 in. (35.8 x 30.5 cm.) Painted in 1940-1942. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Private Collection, Westchester County Private Collection (acquired by descent from the above in 2006) Valerie Carberry Gallery, Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner
161. Philip Guston
1913-1980
Untitled signed, inscribed and dated “Peking Philip Guston ’71” lower right ink on paper 10 1/2 x 13 7/8 in. (26.7 x 35.2 cm.) Executed in 1971. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance The Artist Hauser & Wirth Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Hauser & Wirth; London, Hauser & Wirth, Philip Guston. Laughter in the Dark, Drawings from 1971 & 1975, November 1, 2016 - July 29, 2017, p. 157 (illustrated) New York, McKee Gallery; North Adams, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Poor Richard by Philip Guston, September 7, 2001 - January 26, 2003 New York, Hauser & Wirth; London, Hauser & Wirth, Philip Guston. Laughter in the Dark, Drawings from 1971 & 1975, November 1, 2016 - July 29, 2017, p. 157 (illustrated) Literature Musa Mayer and Sally Radic, eds., Nixon Drawings, 1971 & 1975, New York, 2016, p. 157 (illustrated) Matthew Spender, Caroline Moorehead, Tom McCarthy, Francesca Wade, Edith Devaney, and Barry Humphries, The Worlds of Stephen Spender, Zurich, 2018, p. 59 (illustrated)
Property from a Private Collection, California
162. Roy Lichtenstein
1923-1997
Entablature #11 signed and dated “rf Lichtenstein ’71” on the reverse graphite on paper 20 3/4 x 71 3/8 in. (52.6 x 181.2 cm.) Executed in 1971. Estimate $120,000-180,000 Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco (acquired from the above in 1974) Sonnabend Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner circa 1988 Exhibited New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Roy Lichtenstein, Drawings, January 22 - February 12, 1972 Literature Paul Cummings, Drawings, The 20th Century, New York, 1976, p. 163 (illustrated)
163. Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Campbell’s Tomato Juice Box stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and inscribed “SC 12.006” on the underside silkscreen ink and house paint on plywood 10 x 19 x 9 1/2 in. (25.4 x 48.3 x 24.1 cm.) Executed in 1964. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York Gagosian Gallery, New York Private Collection Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Georg Frei and Neil Printz, eds., The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Sculptures, 1964-1969, Vol. 2A, New York, 2004, no. 865, p. 95
Executed in 1964, Campbell’s Tomato Juice Box belongs to Andy Warhol’s iconic box sculptures that came to defne the Pop art movement. A tongue-incheek replica of the boxes used to package and ship the consumer staple Campbell’s Tomato Juice, this work belongs to the larger series of box sculptures that Warhol created in 1964 and exhibited at his second exhibition at the Stable Gallery, New York, in the same year. Consisting of, among others, his Kellogg’s Cornfakes, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, and Brillo Soap Pads box sculptures, this exhibition presented an immersive foor to ceiling installation that transformed the gallery into what appeared to be a supermarket stockroom – the dazzling show becoming a rallying point for both those for and against Pop art.
logos of such consumer staples as Campbell’s Tomato Soup, Kellogg’s Cornfakes, and Heinz Tomato Ketchup on screenprinted plywood boxes. Between March and April 1964, in anticipation of his Stable Gallery exhibition, he then worked with crafsmen to fabricate numerous plywood boxes identical in size and shape to supermarket cartons, which he then painted and silkscreened with stencils based of of grocery cartons with assistance from Gerard Malanga and Billy NameLinich in his New York City studio. Famously known as The Factory, the studio brilliantly subverted traditional notions of art making. Not only was Warhol embracing the industrial process of silkscreening, works such as the present one radically re-defned traditional notions of sculpture at large.
An icon of Pop art, Campbell’s Tomato Juice Box illustrates how Warhol developed his consumerproduct imagery further in three dimensions. The seeds for Warhol’s box sculptures were laid in early 1962 when Warhol produced a three-dimensional version of his Campbell Soup Cans paintings. Over the next year and a half, he developed this initial idea further by screen printing imitation lettering and
Embracing an artistic process that called to mind a factory assembly line, Warhol brilliantly re-imagined the Duchampian ready-made within the context of 1960s American consumerism. In a cutting indictment of the values of bourgeois culture, Warhol’s box sculptures constitute a deadpan cultural critique of a materialistic and mass-produced society that remains unparalleled in the history of American art.
“What made Andy’s boxes art, while their real-life counterparts were simply utilitarian containers, with no claim to the status of art at all? The question, What is art? had been part of philosophy since the time of Plato. But Andy forced us to rethink the question in an entirely new way.” Arthur C. Danto
Transforming the environment in which it sits, Duane Hanson’s Flea Market Lady, 1990, depicts an eerily lifelike scenario. In perfecting the most minute particularities of his work, Hanson was a sculptor considered to have been operating within the photorealistic realm, whose reaction-inducing oeuvre is exquisitely unlike those of his 20th century counterparts. Cast from hand-chosen human models, painted with skin-toned polychrome and outftted in actual clothes, Hanson’s seductively deceptive sculptures are divested of any obvious artist intervention. In an efort to cast light on the working-class population, Hanson exclusively represented the routinely forgotten and ofentimes disenfranchised members of society. As the son of a farmer growing up in small-town Minnesota, Hanson was intimately familiar with the livelihoods of America’s middle class and succeeded in illuminating their relatively
mundane routines. Shown in her natural habitat, the subject of Flea Market Lady sits among her strewn-about garments supposedly being ofered for sale, reading celebrity gossip in a lackadaisical posture unwelcoming of any potential customers. Hanson asserted that “the best sculptures should look unposed and appear totally unobserved” (Duane Hanson, quoted in Duane Hanson, exh. cat., The Saatchi Gallery, London, 1997, n.p.). As such, this installation candidly captures a mundane moment - one most common to ordinary life, but most readily overlooked. Hanson’s attention to these undervalued aspects of American life works to eliminate the cyclical generalization of the middleclass and carves a place for this population in art history. With meticulous observation to cultural tendencies and an unwavering dedication to detail, Duane Hanson has expertly combined themes of social commentary and precise sculptural artistry in Flea Market Lady.
Property from a Prominent Collection
164. Duane Hanson
1925-1996
Flea Market Lady polychromed bronze, textile, newspaper, found objects and metal folding chair installation dimensions variable fgure 45 x 26 x 39 in. (114.3 x 66 x 99.1 cm.) Executed in 1990, this work is number 1 from a series of 4 unique variants. Estimate $250,000-350,000
Provenance The Artist Hanson Collection, Davie (acquired by descent from the above) Gagosian Gallery, New York Karma, New York (acquired from the above) Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, Duane Hanson: A Master Returns, September 2 – December 2, 1998 Copenhagen, ARKEN Museum for Moderne Kunst; Helsinki City Art Museum; UNESCO Kulturerbe Völklingen, Duane Hanson: Sculptures of the American Dream, January 27, 2007 - April 27, 2008, no. 100/1, p. 177 (illustrated) New York, Karma at Independent Projects, Duane Hanson, Flea Market Lady, November 6 - 9, 2014, n.p. (illustrated) Literature Thomas Buchsteiner and Otto Letze, eds., Duane Hanson: More than Reality, Ostfldern-Ruit, 2001, no. 1001/1, p. 177 (illustrated)
165. Ed Ruscha
b. 1937
The End #45 signed and dated “Ed Ruscha 2004” lower right; titled ““THE END #45”” on the reverse acrylic and ink on museum board 23 7/8 x 30 in. (60.6 x 76.2 cm.) Executed in 2004. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills Private Collection Max Lang, New York Private Collection (acquired from the above) Sotheby’s, New York, May 13, 2009, lot 191 L & M Arts, New York Private Collection (acquired from the above) Exhibited Santa Monica, IKON, Ltd., Spring 2006 Exhibition, April 8, 2006 - May 27, 2006 New York, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, The Other Side, May 5 - July 20, 2006 Literature Ed Ruscha / Raymond Pettibon: The Holy Bible and The End, exh. cat., Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, 2006, p. 13 (illustrated)
Property from an Important West Coast Collector
166. Yayoi Kusama
b. 1929
Two works: (i) Infnity Nets (S.I.T); (ii) Infnity Nets (UIT) (i) signed, titled, inscribed and dated “Yayoi Kusama 2001 Infnity Nets (S.I.T)” (ii) signed, titled, inscribed and dated “Yayoi Kusama 2001 Infnity Nets (UIT)” acrylic on canvas, diptych each 21 x 18 in. (53.3 x 45.7 cm.) Painted in 2001, these works will be accompanied by a registration card issued by YAYOI KUSAMA Inc.
“I would cover a canvas with nets, then continue painting them on the table, on the foor, and fnally on my own body. As I repeated this process over and over again, the nets began to expand to infnity.” Yayoi Kusama
Estimate $300,000-400,000 Provenance Kodama Gallery, Tokyo Acquired from the above by the present owner
Painted in 2001, Yayoi Kusama’s Infnity Nets are an exquisite example of the eponymous series that the artist has been pursuing since the late 1950s. While intimate in size, the pair pulsates with an undeniable force, expanding beyond the confnes of the canvas edges: lines interweave in and out to form fne nets that delicately foat atop the respective black and white canvases with an almost three-dimensional quality. Kusama typically paints works such as the present ones in an almost transcendental state, whereby the act of obsessively painting ofers respite from her lifelong psychosomatic anxiety. Foreground and background, positive and negative space fuse into one everexpanding network. Repetition here does not empty the canvas of meaning, rather it imbues it with a sense of infnity as two-dimensional space is obliterated. As Kusama indeed noted of her act of “self-obliteration” through art: “my self was eliminated, and I had returned and been reduced to the infnity of eternal time and the absolute of space. This was not an allusion but reality itself” (Yayoi Kusama, quoted in Yayoi Kusama, New York, 2000, p. 36). The net is indisputably the most iconic motif in Kusama’s oeuvre, and emerged in her practice afer moving from Tokyo to New York in 1958. Confronted
by the then dominant movement of Abstract Expressionism, Kusama pursued a highly individualistic and infuential aesthetic that was simultaneously informed by her academic training in Japanese nihonga painting, the rhythm of Downtown New York City and, importantly, her own psychology. While paralleling concurrent minimalist tendencies in art on either side of the Atlantic, Kusama’s pictorial idiom drew from the depths of her psyche; the nets fguring as painterly manifestations of the hallucinatory visions accompanying her since childhood. The present works exemplify Kusama’s over four decades long investigation of the Infnity Net motif, whose visceral impact none other than Donald Judd perfectly described when stating, “The efect is both complex and simple…There is a remarkable variety of confguration and expression from point to point across the surface; the small curves coalesce into longer arcs, swell or shif slightly, or form amorphous patterns or partial vertical bands…The total quality suggests an analogy to a large, fragile, but vigorously carved grill or to a massive, solid lace” (Donald Judd, “Reviews and Previews: New Names This Month – Yayoi Kusama”, ArtNews, vol. 58, no. 6, October 1959, p. 17).
Property of an Important New York Collector
167. Gerhard Richter
b. 1932
Donnerstag signed and dated “Richter, 1983” lower right; further signed, titled and dated “‘DONNERSTAG’ Richter, Okt. 83” on the reverse oil on paper 33 7/8 x 24 1/6 in. (86 x 61.4 cm.) Executed in 1983. Estimate $600,000-800,000 Provenance Marian Goodman Gallery, New York Private Collection Jim Kempner Fine Art, New York (acquired from the above) Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Marian Goodman Gallery, Drawings, May 31 - June 24, 1983
“Drawing or painting on paper is more impulsive than painting on canvas. . . It’s less possible to control and that makes the work more intimate, and closer to your feelings. Another thing that fascinates me is that the whiteness of paper creates a space that is diferent from canvas.” Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter Donnerstag, 1983
In Gerhard Richter’s Donnerstag, 1983, paint meets paper with incredible dynamism and force. Broad sweeps of the heavily loaded brushstroke collide with energetic lines across the vast surface, which Richter has covered in delicate veils of mottled paint through his signature squeegee technique. A powerful example of Richter’s early Abstrakte Bilder (Abstract Paintings), Donnerstag is characterized by a formal rigor and a chromatic and compositional complexity that matches Richter’s best works. A true masterwork on paper, Donnerstag is exemplary of the vigor with which Richter pushed the genre of abstraction to new aesthetic and conceptual realms. It was in the summer of 1976 that Richter began his Abstrakte Bilder series, creating his tour-de-force painting Konstruktion without any premediation in terms of drawings or smaller paintings. A bold and sudden departure from his series of Graue Bilder (Gray Paintings) that had occupied him for the preceding decade, these Abstrakte Bilder declared a radical new stage in Richter’s oeuvre. Expanding on his Color Charts and Rot-Blau-Gelb series, Richter began embracing vibrant color and the generative potential of chance to create explosive constellations that few in the face of all tradition. While Richter initially took projections of abstract motifs as a point of departure, by 1981 he had achieved a masterful freehand application of paint to create abstract pictorial spaces in which the materiality of painting takes center stage. Donnerstag demonstrates Richter’s burgeoning exploration of the squeegee, whereby he would use a home-made squeegee to drag and scrape large bands of wet-on-wet paint across the surface to produce unpredictable patterns of color and quasimechanical palimpsests of layered and scraped down color. Widely celebrated as Richter’s single most innovative contribution to the history of painting, the squeegee technique efectively saw Richter further develop the haptic swirls of painting that canceled out the photorealistic images in his early work, such as Tisch (Table), 1962. As Dietmar Elger observed, the squeegee, “is the most important implement for integrating coincidence into his art. For years,
he used it sparingly, but he came to appreciate how the structure of paint applied with a squeegee can never be completely controlled. It thus introduces a moment of surprise that ofen enables him to extricate himself from a creative dead-end, destroying a prior, unsatisfactory efort and opening the door to a fresh start” (Dietmar Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago, 2009, p. 251). Executed in 1983, the present work is an example of Richter’s so-called “Free Abstracts”, in which Richter oscillates between the chance structure ofered by the squeegee and the controlled, confdent gesture of his own brushwork that here crisscrosses and tumbles across the surface in the form of ribbons and broad strokes. As Richter crucially pointed out, “above all, it’s never blind chance: it’s a chance that’s always planned, but also always surprising. And I need it in order to carry on, in order to eradicate my mistakes, to destroy what I’ve worked out wrong, to introduce something diferent and disruptive” (Gerhard Richter, quoted in Hans Ulrich Obrist, ed., Gerhard Richter:
Gerhard Richter, Abstract Painting, 1983. Sprengel Museum Hannover, on loan from a Private Collection, Artwork © Gerhard Richter 2019 (0231)
The Daily Practice of Painting – Writings 1962-1993, London, 1995, p. 159). Richter’s abstract paintings are constructed with a structure in mind, but ultimately, individual cadences of both dissonant and consonant color take on a life of their own. The notion of planned chance takes on particular signifcance given Richter’s choice of working with oil on paper, a medium that ofers immediacy but also allows for little margin of re-working or layering. “Drawing or painting on paper is more impulsive than painting on canvas,” Richter explained. “It’s less possible to control and that makes the work more intimate, and closer to your feelings. Another thing that fascinates me is that the whiteness of paper creates a space that is diferent from canvas” (Gerhard Richter, “Interview with Anna Tilroe”, 1987, in Dietmar Elger and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, eds., Gerhard Richter – Text. Writings, Interviews and Letters 1961-2007, London, 2009, p. 192). While many of Richter’s works on paper tend to be titled afer the approximate date they were created – heightening the sense of immediacy inherent to their creation – Donnerstag belongs to the discrete body of work Richter titled afer certain days in the week. As with the related works Montag (Monday), Dienstag (Tuesday), and Mittwoch (Wednesday), this work brilliantly plays into the passage of time inherent to the process of painting. Exhibited at Marian Goodman’s Drawings group show in New York in 1983, Donnerstag powerfully speaks to an artist at the precipice of international acclaim. Afer the exhibition, which was his frst showing at the gallery, Richter would go on to receive his frst solo exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, in 1985, ushering in a period of international exhibitions that would culminate in his breakthrough exhibition at the Tate, London, in 1991. Donnerstag celebrates an artist at his prime, one who would push his pictorial innovations from the past decades into astonishing heights with his ensuing Abstrakte Bilder.
Detail of the present work
“A painting, to a degree, is still an illusion of a material. But once you cut this thing out of steel and put it up, it is a real thing. . . It has a kind of power that painting doesn’t have. It has this permanent, real feeling that will exist much much much longer than I will ever exist, so it’s a kind of immortality.” Keith Haring
Property from an Important West Coast Collector
168. Keith Haring
1958-1990
Untitled (Self Portrait) incised with the artist’s signature, number, date and foundry mark “K Haring 1989 4/5 acf” on the base painted aluminum 94 1/2 x 58 x 79 in. (240 x 147.3 x 200.7 cm.) Executed in 1989, this work is number 4 from an edition of 5 plus 1 artist’s proof. Estimate $500,000-700,000 Provenance Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2011 Exhibited London, Somerset House, Keith Haring, Sculptures, Painting and Works on Paper, June 6 - October 28, 2005, p. 57 (another example exhibited and installation view illustrated, pp. 14, 15, 49)
Keith Haring
Untitled (Self Portrait), 1989
Soaring nearly eight feet high and frozen in ecstatic dance, Keith Haring’s Untitled (Self Portrait), 1989, ofers a jubilant celebration of life. Transposing his iconic ideogram into three-dimensional form, Haring here exhibits his mastery of the sculptural medium within a period of just four years. It was at Tony Shafrazi’s suggestion that Haring ventured into the sculptural medium, taking his distinctive graphic form into the third dimension. As David Galloway has observed, Haring’s sculptures, “like virtually every other aspect of his comet-like career…reveal a formal evolution of break-dance speed” (David Galloway, Keith Haring, Sculptures, Painting and Works on Paper, exh. cat., Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, 2005, p. 21). Freely sculpting models from cardboard with a pair of scissors, Haring embraced an intuitive and self-assured handson approach to creating sculpture. Afer presenting his frst free-standing sculptures at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, in 1985, Haring agreed to collaborate with the Hans Mayer Gallery in Dusseldorf to produce his so-called Dusseldorf Sculptures, which were notably exhibited at Münster’s Skulpturen Projekte in 1987 along with the works of such stalwarts as Richard Serra and Sol Lewitt. Despite their monumentality, Haring’s sculptures maintain a similar nimbleness of line that one fnds in his drawings and paintings. While clearly refecting his grafti-inspired idiom, these works also connect to a larger sculptural lineage that runs the spectrum of Pablo Picasso and Julio González, as well as Alexander Calder, Yves Tinguely and Claes Oldenburg. Haring particularly appreciated Calder’s work for its “simple, clear, poetic quality to which anyone can respond. Kids like him, too, because the work has spirit, comes from the spirit” (Keith Haring, quoted in David Galloway, Keith Haring, Sculptures, Painting and Works on Paper, exh. cat., Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, 2005, p. 23).
In 1988, Haring was diagnosed with AIDS and there is a latent sense of reckoning with his own mortality in this self-portrait, arguably the most intimate of all subjects in art. Presenting us with a fgure mid-dance, Untitled (Self Portrait) captures the joie-de-vivre of an artist living in the present. As Kenny Scharf, Haring’s roommate in the early 1980s recalled, “From the frst moment we met, dance was very much a part of our lives” (Kenny Scharf, quoted in Keith Haring, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1997, p. 214). Haring, a regular at such legendary New York clubs as the Paradise Garage and the Mudd Club, openly acknowledged the connection of dance in his jubilant sculptures. As David Galloway highlighted in regards to the present work, “…Haring’s own Self Portrait numbers among these ebullient fgures, which ofen give the feeling of vigorous motion momentarily ‘frozen’ by a strobe light” (David Galloway, Keith Haring, Sculptures, Painting and Works on Paper, exh. cat., Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, 2005, p. 26). In the face of death, Haring embraced art as a celebration of life and humanity. Created just a year before Haring passed away due to AIDS-related complications, Untitled (Self Portrait) perfectly captures Haring’s statement on the impact of sculpture: “It has a kind of power that painting doesn’t have. It has this permanent, real feeling that will exist much much much longer than I will ever exist, so it’s a kind of immortality” (Keith Haring, quoted in Daniel Drenger, “Art and Life: An Interview with Keith Haring”, Columbia Art Review, Spring 1988, p. 49).
Another example of the present work installed at Five Keith Haring Sculptures, Somerset House, London, 2005. Artwork Š The Keith Haring Foundation
169. Jean-Michel Basquiat
1960-1988
Untitled acrylic and white chalk on paper 14 1/4 x 22 7/8 in. (36.2 x 58.3 cm.) Executed circa 1981-1982. This work is recorded in the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat under number 60284; a scan of the certifcate of authenticity can be obtained on request. Estimate $300,000-400,000
Remaining in the same private collection for nearly 30 years, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled, circa 1981-1982, is an exquisite painting on paper created at the height of the artist’s breakthrough years. While unseen by the public for decades, this work has become iconic through its publication in the celebrated children’s book Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, which pairs Basquiat’s timeless imagery with Maya Angelou’s eponymous poem. Originally published in 1993 and re-released in 2017, Angelou’s poem puts forth a brave tale in which demons are summoned only to be repelled again – a celebration of courage and defance powerfully amplifed through Basquiat’s art. Executed circa 1981–1982, this work perfectly evidences the revolutionary pictorial idiom with which Basquiat burst onto the art scene in New York at merely 20 years of age. Basquiat had frst gained notoriety in the late 1970s for the conceptually and politically charged grafti works he emblazoned around downtown under the pseudonym SAMO©, before directing his talent towards painting and drawing. When Basquiat’s work was exhibited at the watershed exhibition New York/New Wave at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in early 1981, it was notably “the observable relationship of his drawing to past art” that made him stand out for poet and art critic Rene Ricard, who proclaimed, “The elegance of Twombly is there but from the same source (grafti) and so is the brut of the young Dubufet” (Rene Ricard, “The Radiant Child”, ArtForum, December 1981, online).
Provenance Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Christie’s, New York, November 14, 1989, lot 468 Fausto Galeazzi, Brescia (acquired by 1993) Galleria Blu, Milan Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Maya Angelou, Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, New York, 1993, pp. 16-17 (illustrated) Maya Angelou, Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, New York, 2017, pp. 20-21 (illustrated)
Untitled vividly echoes Ricard’s now famous observation, evoking a similar immediacy and rawness that one fnds in Dubufet’s drawings and paintings of animals. The present work demonstrates the incredibly mature pictorial idiom of Basquiat’s breakthrough works, which clearly refect his lifelong fxation with drawing. A voracious autodidact, Basquiat had taught himself to draw as a child – creating drawings equally inspired by television cartoons and comic books, as well as by the anatomical textbook Gray’s Anatomy and the artworks and artifacts he encountered during his frequent visits to New York museums. In Panthers in the Park, the present work accompanies the lines, “Panthers in the park / Strangers in the dark/ No, they don’t frighten me at all.” The fgure at center indeed evokes a wild animal, one that appeared in various guises within Basquiat’s work beginning in 1981, and notably gave rise to a discrete group of paintings in 1982. The present work is closely related to Untitled, 1981, a major work on paper in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, that features a very similar, albeit more cartoon-esque, skeletal creature, but also shares a similar compositional force as the iconic painting Dog, 1982. Similarly positioning the animal against a moody, painterly black and blue ground, Basquiat achieves a heightened emotional state that poignantly captures the central tenets of Angelou’s poem. Basquiat frequently exorcised his own creative demons through his art, an apt parallel to the poem’s call for courage against life’s adversities. While Basquiat passed away at merely 27 years old in 1988, the staying power of his art remains more than three decades later.
170. Sigmar Polke
1941-2010
Untitled signed and dated “S. Polke 83� lower lef edge acrylic on paper 27 1/4 x 39 in. (69.3 x 99.2 cm.) Executed in 1983. We are most grateful to Mr. Michael Trier, Cologne for his assistance with the cataloguing of this work. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Galerie Schmela, Dusseldorf Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, May 31, 2014, lot 786 Tilton Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from a Distinguished Midwestern Collection
171. Sturtevant
1926-2014
Stella Getty Tomb (First Study) signed, titled and dated “STELLA GETTY TOMB (FIRST STUDY) STURTEVANT ’88” on the overlap black enamel on canvas 84 x 96 1/8 in. (213.4 x 244 cm.) Painted in 1988. Estimate $400,000-600,000 Provenance Rhona Hofman Gallery, Chicago Acquired from the above by the present owner in October 1989 Exhibited Frankurter Kunstrverein; Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Prospect 89, Eine internationale Ausstellung aktueller Kunst, March 21 - May 21, 1989, p. 224 (titled as Stella Getty Tomb) Chicago, Rhona Hofman Gallery, Sturtevant, June 1 - 30, 1990, p. 20 (illustrated, p. 11; titled as Stella Getty Tomb (Second Version)) Literature Tilman Osterwold, ed., Sturtevant, exh. cat., Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 1992, p. 99 (illustrated and titled as Stella Getty Tomb (Second Version); erroneously dated 1990) Lena Maculan, ed., Sturtevant: Catalogue Raisonné 1964-2004, Ostfldern-Ruit, 2004, no. 207, p. 99 (illustrated and titled as Stella Getty Tomb (Second Version)) Uto Kittelmann and Mario Kramer, Sturtevant, The Brutal Truth, exh. cat., Museum fur Modern Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 2004, p. 85 (referenced as Stella Getty Tomb (Second Version) in illustrated artist’s notebook page)
Sturtevant
Stella Getty Tomb (First Study), 1988
Sturtevant’s Stella Getty Tomb (First Study), 1988, showcases the artist’s reinvigoration of the ideals of appropriation championed by Marcel Duchamp in a contemporary voice. Made almost three decades afer the original canvas by Frank Stella which it imitates, the present work features the same thin white lines emerging through an expanse of bold, rich black brushstrokes as in the 1959 masterpiece, Getty Tomb. Beginning with a vertical rectangle at the center and expanding outward to the bounds of the canvas, the radiating linear forms create an illusion of depth that simultaneously emphasizes the fatness of the work’s two-dimensional surface. While identical in composition and scale, Sturtevant assuredly stated, “The brutal truth of the work is that it is not a copy. The push and shove of the work is the leap from image to concept. The dynamics of the work is that it throws out representation” (Sturtevant, quoted in The Brutal Truth, exh. cat., Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 2004, p. 19). Since her passing in 2014, Sturtevant has received the critical attention she was denied for much of the late 20th century. Afer receiving the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement award at the 2011 Venice Biennale, her work was celebrated in her frst comprehensive survey in the United States since 1973 beginning at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2014.
Sturtevant appropriated her frst Stella paintings in 1964 and 1969, not returning to the minimalist painter’s oeuvre until 1988, the year of the present work. Afer her frst solo show in 1965, where a “repetition” of one of Stella’s concentric square paintings featured prominently, she was met with very mixed reviews. Dealers, artists and collectors mostly rejected her work for the next decade, resulting in Sturtevant’s ten-year hiatus from the art world beginning in 1974. Upon returning to art-making in 1985, Sturtevant looked to works by Pop masters such as Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and of course, Frank Stella, all of whom she admired for similar ideologies to herself. For Sturtevant, the 1960s represented “the big bang of pop art. But pop only dealt with the surface, I started asking questions about what lay beneath the surface. What is the understructure of art? What is the silent power of art?” (Sturtevant, quoted in conversation with Peter Halley, Index Magazine, 2005, online). Sturtevant called Stella’s black paintings, such as Getty Tomb, “just incredible.” To recreate Stella’s 1959 painting, Sturtevant made two versions, presumably to perfect the work’s likeness. Without mechanical tools, she hand-painted each white stripe in industrial enamel paint with a thin brush, mirroring Stella’s own process. She worked predominantly from memory,
exacting the same brushwork as Stella with skips that lef certain areas unpainted. The resulting lines appear to glitter like faintly illuminated lights, achieving the same illusionistic feat as Stella’s masterpiece. Indeed, Stella is credited as the painter who bridged the gap between Abstract Expressionism and Pop art. Like Sturtevant, he questioned the motive behind artmaking, the possibilities of painting, and its potential for initiating a discussion. In 1966, Stella proclaimed of his paintings, “It’s art, or it wants to be art, or it asks to be considered as art, and therefore the terms we have for discussing art are probably good enough” (Frank Stella, quoted in “‘What You See Is What You See’: Donald Judd and Frank Stella on the End of Painting, in 1966”, in ARTnews, July 10, 2015, online). Sturtevant echoed these sentiments, and took the discussion of art a step further with her repetitions like Stella Getty Tomb (First Study). As Richard Phelan aptly described, “Whether she reuses a Target painting by Johns, a Marilyn by Warhol, a Black Painting by Stella, or an assisted readymade by Duchamp, what she seeks is to remove the viewer from the visual to the conceptual. She wants feat and counter feat to produce thought” (Richard Phelan, “The Counter Feats of Elaine Sturtevant”, E-rea, December 15, 2015, online).
Sturtevant working on her Stella Getty Tomb paintings in her New York studio, 1971. Photo © Peter Muscato, New York, Artwork © Estate Sturtevant, Paris
172. Daniel Buren
b. 1938
Zu Unterstreichen, travail situé white acrylic paint on cotton canvas in alternating vertical white and black stripes each with a width of 3 3/8 in. (8.7 cm.), in 2 parts each 38 x 38 in. (96.6 x 96.6 cm.) Executed in February 1989. An Avertissement will be established by Daniel Buren under the name of the purchaser, and will be signed by the latter. Every work since 1968 is accompanied by a document certifying it. Estimate Upon Request Provenance Galerie Konrad Fischer, Dusseldorf Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Dusseldorf, Galerie Konrad Fischer, Zu Unterstreichen (Fragmente), February 18 April 15, 1989
Zu Unterstreichen, travail situé – to underscore, to emphasize, to underline in German – is a prime example of Daniel Buren’s body of striped works, begun in the mid-1960s and steadfastly continued throughout his career. Designed to dramatically alter the viewer’s perception of space, Buren’s striped compositions have been conceived in many media, both two- and three-dimensional, as structural works depending on the space in which they were made – in situ – sometimes subsequently displaced and transformed into situated works. Divided in two panels of identical dimensions, one placed on top of the other, Zu Unterstreichen, travail situé, 1989, exceptionally embodies the crux of Buren’s idiosyncratic gesture. Across its two surfaces, six black bands stretch in a vertical pull, separated by large white counterparts. In keeping with Buren’s systemic practice, all bands are of similar width – 8.7 cm. or 3 3/8 inches – an exact measure that the artist began using roughly 54 years ago when he introduced the motif and continued employing unfinchingly ever since. “I use it [the stripe] and it’s a reason I invented a term, which I call ‘visual tool’,” the artist said. “It’s not only something you can recognize; it’s also something I can use to change an environment” (Daniel Buren, quoted in Emily McDermott, “Stripes Across the Decades”, Interview Magazine, March 6, 2015, online). Executed in 1989, Zu Unterstreichen, travail situé coincided with a time when Buren began receiving increasing critical and institutional attention in France and overseas. Just three years earlier, he had placed 260 columns of varying heights in the inner courtyard of the Palais Royal, Paris, prominently occupying its vast space with his signature black and white bands. That same year, Buren had exhibited a solo pavilion for France at the Venice Biennale, and was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion award for his in situ. With his idiosyncratic stripes, Buren aimed to “challenge the idea of a frozen point of view” and “upturn the viewers’ expectations of the environment that surrounds them” (Daniel Buren, quoted in Karim Crippa “Freedom to the viewer! An interview with Daniel Buren”, ArtBasel, 7 June 2018, online). Photo-souvenir: Zu Unterstreichen, travail situé, February 1989, each 96.6 x 96.6 cm. © Daniel Buren/ Adagp, Paris. Photo: Phillips, New York
173. Donald Judd
1928-1994
Untitled signed “Judd” on the reverse cadmium red oil on wood 25 3/8 x 15 7/8 x 2 in. (64.5 x 40.6 x 5.2 cm.) Executed in 1976. Estimate $70,000-90,000 Provenance Peder Bonnier, New York Rhona Hofman Gallery, Chicago Galerie Maeght Lelong, New York (acquired from the above in 1985) Christie’s, New York, May 6, 1992, lot 346 Private Collection (acquired at the above sale) Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection, New York
174. Robert Mangold
b. 1937
A Triangle within Two Rectangles signed, titled and dated “R. Mangold 1977 A Triangle within two Rectangles” on the reverse of each sheet acrylic and graphite on two adjoined sheets of paper 39 1/2 x 67 in. (100.2 x 170.2 cm.) Executed in 1977. Estimate $70,000-100,000 Provenance John Weber Gallery, New York Private Collection Sotheby’s, New York, November 1, 1984, lot 155 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
175. James Turrell
b. 1943
Hologram #10 hologram and glass construction 55 1/4 x 40 1/8 x 2 1/2 in. (140.3 x 101.9 x 6.4 cm.) Executed in 2008. Estimate $150,000-200,000 Provenance Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist) Christie’s, New York, November 16, 2017, lot 824 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Alternate view of present work
176. Richard Serra
b. 1938
Large Reversal #14 paintstick on handmade paper, in 2 parts 104 7/8 x 31 3/8 in. (266.5 x 79.7 cm.) Executed in 2013. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Gagosian Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
177. Carlos Cruz-Diez
1923-2019
Physichromie 1496 signed with the artist’s initials, inscribed, titled and dated “PHYSICHROMIE 1496 CRUZ-DIEZ PARIS 2007 C. D” on a plaque on the reverse silkscreen and acrylic strips, in artist’s frame 39 5/8 x 78 3/4 in. (100.5 x 200 cm.) Executed in 2007. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance The Artist Mayor Gallery, London (acquired from the above in 2009) Acquired from the above by the present owner
Alternate view of present work
178. Jesús Rafael Soto
1923-2005
Vibración y Color signed, titled and dated ““VIBRACION Y COLOR” Soto 1969” on the reverse acrylic on wood and metal 53 1/8 x 32 5/8 x 5 1/2 in. (135 x 83 x 14 cm.) Executed in 1969, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by the Comité Soto. Estimate $350,000-450,000 Provenance Dr. Eloy Montenegro, Caracas Acquired from the above by the present owner
A pioneer of Kinetic Art and Op Art, Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto has, since the 1950s, produced a body of work that is remarkable for its ability to consistently examine complex philosophical and scientifc questions pertaining to the nature of the universe. Soto began his career, at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas of Caracas, where he gained a thorough understanding of Impressionism and Cubism, movements that the artist always regarded as fundamental to his artistic practice. “I was looking for vibration through repetition. I was interested in the problem of vibration and the study of light, something that had fascinated me in the work of Velázquez, and that the impressionists, whom I have always respected, studied very consciously” (Jesús Rafael Soto, quoted in Ariel Jimenez, Conversaciones con Jesús Rafael Soto, Caracas, 2005, p. 154). Between 1950 and 1962, the artist experimented with optics and movement. Paris was key for this experimentation. His attendance to the experimental Salon des Realités Nouvelles and Galerie Denise René along with his exchange of ideas with well-known European artists such as Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, Jean Tinguely, and Victor Vasarely, as well as other important Latin American artists, allowed him to become one of the central players in the development of kinetic and
interactive art. He searched in his work for a personal language that would allow him to project energy. By 1969, Soto had already established himself as a renowned artist in the international scene. He had his frst retrospectives at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris and many exhibitions in galleries around the world. Vibración y Color, 1969, is an extraordinary example of Soto’s texturally and chromatically vibrant oeuvre. With the use of white, red yellow and black, varying scales and kinetics, Soto creates a work that absorbs the viewer into its center of gravity. The efect of movement is accentuated by the contrast between the stacked upper part of the composition and the variations in formats between the squares in the lower part. It is an exemplary work where the artist has redefned art’s relationship to viewers, refusing a traditional model of passive contemplation. Vibración y Color requires the active participation of the viewer, who must circulate before the work to appreciate the optical impression of movement that the artist generates by the superposition of forms, structures and colors. The viewer’s involvement is of critical importance to create a symbiotic relationship with the work, as one can only truly appreciate the full components when moving in front of the work.
179. Kenneth Noland
1924-2010
Hot Blue signed, titled, inscribed and dated “Hot Blue Kenneth Noland 1980 80-082” on the reverse acrylic on shaped canvas 49 x 175 3/4 in. (124.5 x 446.3 cm.) Painted in 1980. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance André Emmerich Gallery, New York William J. Hokin, Chicago (acquired from the above in 1980) Christie’s, New York, May 2, 1991, lot 165 Private Collection Sotheby’s, New York, May 16, 2001, lot 224 Gallery Seomi, Seoul Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Kenneth Noland: New Paintings, November 1980 Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Selections from the William J. Hokin Collection, April 20 - June 16, 1985, p. 91 (illustrated)
Property from a Distinguished Los Angeles Collection
180. Tony Smith
1912-1980
New Piece incised with the artist’s signature, number and date “Tony Smith 66/80 2/6” on the underside bronze with black patina 22 x 37 x 43 in. (55.9 x 94 x 109.2 cm.) Conceived in 1966 and cast in 1980, this work is number 2 from an edition of 6. Estimate $70,000-90,000 Provenance Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1990
Exhibited Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; Philadelphia, The Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Tony Smith, Two Exhibitions of Sculpture, November 8, 1966 January 6, 1967, n.p. (another example exhibited) New York, The Pace Gallery, Tony Smith: Paintings and Sculpture, September 23 - October 22, 1983, p. 32 (another example exhibited and illustrated)
181. John McCracken
1934-2011
Amara signed, titled and dated “AMARA John McCracken 1992� on the reverse polyester resin and fberglass on wood 12 1/4 x 41 7/8 x 20 3/8 in. (31.1 x 106.5 x 51.8 cm.) Executed in 1992. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance L.A. Louver, Los Angeles Gallery Seomi, Seoul (acquired from the above) Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Los Angeles, L.A. Louver, John McCracken: Paintings and Sculptures, February 27 March 27, 1993
Property of an Important New York Collector
182. Beverly Pepper
b. 1922
Normanno Column II cast iron 91 x 22 x 21 1/2 in. (231.1 x 55.9 x 54.6 cm.) Executed in 1980. Estimate $30,000-50,000 Provenance Diane Upright Fine Arts, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in April 1999 Exhibited Bufalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Columbus Museum of Art; The Brooklyn Museum; Miami, Center for the Fine Arts, Beverly Pepper: Sculpture in Place, September 13, 1986 - November 1, 1987, no. 32, pp. 14, 117, 182 (another variant exhibited and illustrated, pp. 15, 115, 116)
Property of an Important New York Collector
183. Joel Shapiro
b. 1941
Untitled bronze 44 x 67 x 46 1/4 in. (111.8 x 170.2 x 117.5 cm.) Executed in 1992, this work is unique. Estimate $90,000-150,000 Provenance The Pace Gallery, New York Seomi Gallery, Seoul (acquired from the above in 1995) Sotheby’s, New York, November 18, 1998, lot 105 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited New York, The Pace Gallery, Joel Shapiro: Sculpture and Drawings, April 30 - June 18, 1993, p. 16 (illustrated)
Property from a Distinguished Private Collection, New York
184. Elizabeth Murray
1940-2007
2. B.! signed, titled, inscribed and dated “2B’ Oct 1990 Elizabeth Murray” on the reverse oil on canvas, on artist’s constructed stretcher 68 1/4 x 49 x 3 1/2 in. (173.5 x 124.5 x 9 cm.) Executed in October 1990.
2. B. !, 1990, belongs among a particular series of letter paintings inspired by and mimicking the bombing of bubbling letters and jagged tags of the grafti faring up across New York City during the 1980s and 1990s.
Estimate $40,000-60,000
For Elizabeth Murray, grafti was something “you couldn’t avoid in New York […] you couldn’t help but be excited by those big bloopy shapes,” as she told Robert Storr in an interview for her 2005 career retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Murray seized on the potential of bubblewriting and quickly assimilated it into her art.
Provenance Paula Cooper Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1992 Exhibited Los Angeles, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Paintings and Drawings, July 17–August 24, 1991 Literature David Frankel, ed., Elizabeth Murray, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2005, no. 21, p. 76 (illustrated in incorrect orientation)
In 1990, the year this painting was made, Murray told flmmaker Michael Blackwood in his flm Art in an Age of Mass Culture: Popular culture is one part of teeming life that everybody, all of us, are involved in. Whether we know it or not, even if we try to withdraw ourselves from it, we are all really involved in it every day when we walk out into the streets and you hear a guy walking by with his box blasting a rap song at you. Or in the middle of the subway. Or walking up Broadway. I mean, it’s pouring out at you all the time. Playfully animated, the painting’s title references the opening phrase of a soliloquy uttered in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1. In his speech, Prince Hamlet contemplated death and suicide bemoaning the pain and unfairness of life but acknowledged that the alternative might be worse. 2. B. ! plays on this psychological tenor. Of particular interest is Murray’s unique use of matches in the painting used to portray open and grasping hands. Later that same year, Murray would create a pair to this painting titled Knot 2. B. thereby, in a way, completing Hamlet’s famous verse. —Jason Andrew Director of the Estate of Elizabeth Murray
185. Deborah Butterfeld
b. 1949
Jerusalem Horse II steel rods, metal wire, and rusted tin 92 x 110 x 46 in. (233.7 x 279.4 x 116.8 cm.) Executed in 1980. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Cologne O.K. Harris Gallery, New York Private Collection (acquired from the above) Sotheby’s, New York, November 12, 2014, lot 277 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Cologne, Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Visiting Artist Exhibition, October - November 1981 Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Deborah Butterfeld: Jerusalem Horses, February - April 1981, p. 14 (illustrated)
186. Frank Stella
b. 1936
DADAAP painted board with metal hardware 71 5/8 x 57 x 29 in. (182 x 144.8 x 73.7 cm.) Executed in 2003. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York Private Collection, Florida Sotheby’s, New York, September 29, 2016, lot 100 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Property from an Important West Coast Collector
187. John Chamberlain
1927-2011
BASTINADO painted and chromium-plated steel 10 x 18 x 11 in. (25.4 x 45.7 x 27.9 cm.) Executed in 2006. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance PaceWildenstein, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2006
188. Yayoi Kusama
b. 1929
Untitled signed and dated “Y. KUSAMA 1976” along lower edge sewn stufed fabric, silver paint and shoe 6 1/2 x 9 1/4 x 2 7/8 in. (16.5 x 23.6 x 7.3 cm.) Executed in 1976, this work will be accompanied by a registration card issued by YAYOI KUSAMA Inc. Estimate $15,000-20,000 Provenance Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo Private Collection (acquired from the above) Phillips, London, October 6, 2016, lot 151 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Tokyo, Ota Fine Arts, Yayoi Kusama: Kusama’s Kusama, July 8 - August 7, 1997
189. Yayoi Kusama
b. 1929
Nets signed, titled and dated “Yayoi Kusama 1998 Nets� on the reverse acrylic on canvas 9 x 6 1/4 in. (22.7 x 15.8 cm.) Painted in 1998, this work is accompanied by a registration card issued by YAYOI KUSAMA Inc. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Private Collection, Japan (acquired directly from the artist in 2000) Mallet, Tokyo, February 7, 2014, Lot 176 Private Collection Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2018
190. Jiro Takamatsu
1936-1998
Two works: (i) Shadow No. 1467; (ii) Shadow No. 1468 (i) signed, partially titled and dated “J. TAKAMATSU 1997 No. 1467” on the reverse (ii) signed, partially titled and dated “J. TAKAMATSU 1997 No. 1468” on the reverse (i) acrylic and graphite on canvas (ii) acrylic on canvas (i) 13 1/4 x 9 5/8 in. (33.7 x 24.3 cm.) (ii) 13 3/8 x 9 5/8 in. (34 x 24.3 cm.) Painted in 1984/1997. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance The Estate of the Artist McCafrey Fine Art, New York (acquired from the above) Acquired from the above by the present owner
(i)
(iii)
(ii)
191. Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Nine works: (i) Large Female; (ii) By the Beautiful Sea Shirley Booth; (iii) Boys Upper Torso with Marbelized Background; (iv) Male Head; (v) Boys Head; (vi) Caterpillars and Weaving; (vii) Male Upper Torso; (viii) Necklace; (ix) Abstract Stenciled Image (i-ix) each stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York and numbered on the reverse (i) silver leaf and ink on Strathmore paper (ii, vii) ink on manila paper (iii) ink on Strathmore paper (iv, v) graphite on bond paper (vi) ink and tempera on Strathmore paper (viii) ink and graphite on Strathmore paper on board (ix) spray paint on Strathmore paper
(i) 14 1/4 x 13 1/2 in. (36.2 x 34.3 cm) (ii) 13 7/8 x 11 in. (35.2 x 27.9 cm.) (iii) 28 1/2 x 22 1/2 in. (72.4 x 57.2 cm.) (iv) 10 7/8 x 8 5/8 in. (27.6 x 21.9 cm) (v) 8 3/8 x 11 in. (21.3 x 27.9 cm) (vi) 8 x 9 in. (20.3 x 22.9 cm.) (vii) 19 3/4 x 13 3/4 in. (42.5 x 34.9 cm.) (viii) 12 3/4 x 5 5/8 in. (32.4 x 14.3 cm) (ix) 12 1/4 x 16 3/4 in. (31.1 x 42.5 cm) (i) Executed circa 1957. (ii) Executed circa 1954. (iii, vii) Executed circa 1952. (iv) Executed circa 1950. (v) Executed circa 1948-1951. (vi) Executed circa 1948. (viii, ix) Executed circa 1958. Please refer to phillips.com for full cataloging.
(v)
(iv)
(vi)
(ix)
(viii)
Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance The Estate of the Artist Anthony d’Ofay Gallery, London Acquired from the above by the present owner
(vii)
Exhibited (iii) Städtische Galerie Ravensburg, Andy Warhol Watercolour, October 1 – December 10, 2000, no. 19, p. 131 (illustrated, p. 49)(
(iv) Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie; London, Tate Modern; Los Angeles, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Andy Warhol, October 2, 2001 – August 18, 2002, no. 4, p. 306 (illustrated, p. 63) Literature (vii) The Andy Warhol Foundation, Andy Warhol: Men, San Francisco, 2004, no. 19, p. 248 (illustrated, n.p.) Steven Buttal and Dave Hickey, ed., Andy Warhol “GIANT” Size, London, 2006, p. 25 (illustrated) (viii) The Andy Warhol Foundation, Andy Warhol: Fashion, London, 2004, no. 168, p. 253 (illustrated, n.p.)
192. Roy Lichtenstein
1923-1997
Screen with Brushstrokes incised with the artist’s signature and number “Roy Lichtenstein 3/6” on a plaque afxed to the reverse acrylic and gold leaf on lacquered wood relief, in 5 joined parts overall 94 1/2 x 27 x 2 1/2 in. (240 x 68.6 x 6.4 cm.) Executed in 1986, this work is number 3 from an edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs. Estimate $180,000-220,000 Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Giant Lacquer Screens by Roy Lichtenstein and Ed Ruscha, March 1986 (another example exhibited) New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Object Lessons, December 1992 - January 1993 (another example exhibited) New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Homestyle, April May 2005 (another example exhibited) Literature N. M. Dawes, ed., “Screen Gems”, Connoisseur, June 1986, p. 40 (another example illustrated)
verso
193. Tom Otterness
b. 1952
Nero’s Apartment House incised with the artist’s signature, number and date “© T. OTTERNESS 89-90 2/3” and stamped with the Tallix foundry mark on the base bronze 60 1/2 x 42 x 30 in. (153.7 x 106.7 x 76.2 cm.) Executed in 1989-1990, this work is number 2 from an edition of 3. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Brooke Alexander Inc., New York Jason McCoy Inc., New York Private Collection (acquired from the above)
194. Tom Otterness
b. 1952
Podium Figure incised with the artist’s signature, number and date “© T. OTTERNESS 90 1/3” and stamped with the Tallix foundry mark on the base bronze 31 1/4 x 29 x 14 1/2 in. (79.4 x 73.7 x 36.8 cm.) Executed in 1990, this work is number 1 from an edition of 3. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Jason McCoy Inc., New York Private Collection (acquired from the above)
Property from a Prominent Private American Collection
195. Robert Graham
1938-2008
Fountain Figure II bronze 76 x 39 3/8 x 32 1/4 in. (193 x 100 x 82 cm.) Executed in 1983, this work is from an edition of 6. Estimate $25,000-35,000 Provenance Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Property from a Distinguished Los Angeles Collection
196. Keith Haring
1958-1990
Untitled (Beast) incised with the artist’s name and date “K. Haring 83” and signed, dedicated and dated “For Kyle Merry Christmas 83 Keith” on the reverse oil, acrylic and marker on carved wood 11 x 15 3/4 in. (28 x 40 cm.) Executed in 1983. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Private Collection Cornette de Saint Cyr, Drouot-Richelieu, Paris, November 22, 1998, lot 110 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
197. Sam Gilliam
b. 1933
Plaster Nights signed, titled and dated “Plaster Nights, 1980, Sam Gilliam” on the reverse acrylic and canvas collage on canvas 80 x 92 in. (203.2 x 233.7 cm.) Executed in 1980. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Middendorf/Lane Gallery, Washington, D.C. Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1980
198. Louise Fishman
b. 1939
Ida’s Special signed, titled and dated “Sept. 1986 Louise Fishman “IDA’S Special”” on the reverse oil on canvas 61 x 36 1/8 in. (155 x 91.6 cm.) Painted in 1986. Estimate $15,000-20,000 Provenance Baskerville + Watson, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1987 Biennial Exhibition, April 10 – July 5, 1987, p. 188 (illustrated, p. 52)
Property from an Important Private Collection, Florida
199. Susan Rothenberg
b. 1945
Red Trunk signed and dated “Susan Rothenberg 1980” on the reverse acrylic and Flashe on canvas 45 7/8 x 38 5/8 in. (116.8 x 98 cm.) Painted in 1980. Estimate $25,000-35,000 Provenance The Willard Gallery, New York Martin Sklar, New York The Greenberg Gallery, St. Louis The O’Hara Gallery, New York Rittenhouse Fine Art, New York Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1992) Thence by descent to the present owner Exhibited Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Horse of a Diferent Color, October 27 December 8, 1991
200. Ed Clark
1926-2019
Summer in Paris #8 signed and dated “Ed Clark 94” lower right dry pigment and acrylic on Arches paper 25 7/8 x 34 5/8 in. (65.6 x 88 cm.) Executed in 1994. Estimate $15,000-20,000 Provenance The Artist G.R. N’Namdi Gallery, Birmingham Private Collection (acquired from the above) Rachel Davis Auctioneers, Cleveland, October 20, 2018, lot 318 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
201. Sam Gilliam
b. 1933
A Series 4 titled “‘A Series’ 4” lower lef; signed and dated “Sam Gilliam, 2015” lower right pigment-based ink on handmade paper 46 x 28 in. (116.8 x 71.1 cm.) Executed in 2015. Estimate $25,000-35,000 Provenance David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from a Prominent Private American Collection
202. Malcolm Morley
1931-2018
Landscape with Horses signed “Malcolm Morley” lower right oil on canvas 108 1/8 x 72 1/8 in. (274.5 x 183.3 cm.) Painted in 1980. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance Xavier Fourcade, Inc., New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited New York, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., One Major New Work Each, November 4 - December 31, 1980 London, Royal Academy of Arts, A New Spirit in Painting, January 15 - March 18, 1981, p. 221 (illustrated, p. 106) New York, Xavier Fourcade, Inc., Malcolm Morley: New Paintings and Watercolors, April 3 May 9, 1981 Berlin, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Zeitgeist: International Art Exhibition, October 15 - December 19, 1982, p. 117 (illustrated, n.p.) Kunsthalle Basel; Rotterdam, Museum Boymans van Beuningen; London, The Whitechapel Art Gallery; Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art; Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art; New York, The Brooklyn Museum, Malcolm Morley: Painting 1965-1982, January 22, 1983 - April 15, 1984, p. 69 (illustrated, pp. 16, 58)
203. Robert Motherwell
1915-1991
Drunk With Turpentine signed with the artist’s initials and dated “RM 1983” upper lef oil on paper 29 x 23 1/8 in. (73.8 x 58.7 cm.) Executed in 1983. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Sala Pelaires, Palma de Mallorca Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited Palma de Mallorca, Sala Pelaires, Robert Motherwell/ Jim Bird, November - December 1986, no. 1, n.p. (illustrated) Literature Jack Flam, Katy Rogers and Tim Cliford, Robert Motherwell: Paintings and Collages, A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941-1991, vol. 3, New Haven, 2012, no. W675, p. 646 (illustrated)
Property from an Important Chicago Collection
204. Alexander Calder
1898-1976
Bowling signed and dated “Calder 74” lower right gouache and ink on paper 29 1/2 x 43 1/8 in. (74.9 x 109.5 cm.) Executed in 1974, this work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A12771. Estimate $40,000-60,000
Provenance Galerie Maeght, Paris Private Collection, Brussels (acquired from the above in 1974) Private Collection, Chicago Thence by descent to the present owner Literature “The 25 Most Intriguing People of 1974: Alexander Calder”, People, vol. 2, no. 27, December 30, 1974 – January 6, 1975, pp. 4243 (illustrated in progress)
205. Andy Warhol
1928-1987
Still Life (Hammer and Sickle) stamped by the Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York, initialed “VF” and numbered “31.010” on the reverse graphite on T.H. Saunders paper 40 3/8 x 26 7/8 in. (102.4 x 68.4 cm.) Executed in 1977. Estimate $20,000-30,000 Provenance The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York L & M Arts, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Zurich, Thomas Ammann Fine Art, ANDY WARHOL, Hammer and Sickle, 1999, no. 81, p. 49 (illustrated) New York, C&M Arts, Andy Warhol: Hammer and Sickle, October 24 - December 7, 2002, no. 15, p. 20 (illustrated)
Property from a Distinguished Private Collector
206. Sol LeWitt
1928-2007
Black, Yellow, Blue Squares signed, titled and dated “A BLACK, YELLOW AND BLUE SQUARES SOL LEWITT, GENOA MAY 22 1975” lower right graphite and ink on paper 19 5/8 x 27 1/2 in. (50 x 69.9 cm.) Executed on May 22, 1975. Estimate $20,000-30,000 Provenance Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris Alfred Huber, Zurich Private Collection Christie’s, New York, September 13, 2006, lot 204 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
207. Roberto Matta
1911-2002
Scie le désir signed and inscribed “204 Matta” on the reverse oil on canvas 23 3/4 x 28 3/4 in. (60.2 x 73 cm.) Painted in 1957, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity from the Archives de l’oeuvre de Matta. Estimate $50,000-60,000 Provenance Private Collection, Paris Tajan, Paris, November 23, 2000, lot 55 Mr. and Mrs. Guy Heytens, Monaco Christie’s, New York, November 21, 2002, lot 83 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
208. Roberto Matta
1911-2002
Conversation signed “Matta” lower lef oil on canvas 40 1/8 x 36 3/8 in. (102 x 92.3 cm.) Painted in 1973, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity from the Archives de l’oeuvre de Matta. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Private Collection, Rome Cornette de Saint-Cyr, Paris, June 11, 1991, lot 60 Studio Kostel, Paris (acquired at the above sale) JSC Modern Art Gallery, Paris Acquired from the above by the present owner
Property from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, sold to beneft the Acquisitions Fund
209. Marino Marini
1901-1980
Portrait of Lamberto Vitali stamped with the artist’s initials “M.M.” and the Fonderia d’Arte M.A.F. Milano mark on the reverse bronze sculpture 9 1/8 x 6 x 9 1/2 in. (23.2 x 15.2 x 24.1 cm.) overall with base 15 3/8 x 6 1/4 x 9 1/2 in. (39.1 x 15.8 x 24 cm.) Conceived in 1937-1945 and cast in 1949, this work is from an edition of 3. Estimate $20,000-30,000 Provenance The Artist The Museum of Modern Art, New York (acquired directly from the artist in 1949) Exhibited New York, The Museum of Modern Art, TwentiethCentury Italian Art, June 28 – September 18, 1949, p. 131 (another example exhibited) New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Recent Acquisitions to the Museum Collection, February 1 – March 19, 1950 Tokyo, The National Museum of Modern Art, Marino Marini, April 15 – June 4, 1978, no. 34, p. 127 (another example exhibited) Literature Lamberto Vitali, Marini, Florence, 1946, no. 51, p. 141 (another example illustrated) Enzo Carli, Marino Marini, Milan, 1950, no. XIII, p. 51 (another example illustrated, p. 52) Alberto Busignani, Marino Marini, I maestri del Novecento, Florence, 1968, no. 11 Patrick Waldberg, Herbert Read and Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, L’Oeuvre complete de Marino Marini, Paris, 1970, no. 206 Carlo Pirovano, Marino Marini – Scultore, Milan, 1972, no. 219 Marina Beretta, ed., Marino Marini, Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculptures, Milan, 1998, no. 125a, p. 126 (another example illustrated, p. 125)
In 1944, an earlier variant of Marini’s Portrait of Lamberto Vitali was included in James Thrall Soby and Alfred H. Barr, Jr.’s exhibition Twentieth-Century Italian Art at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The artist agreed to make two new bronze casts, one for the museum, and a second for the private collection of a MoMA trustee.
210. Georg Kolbe
1877-1947
Kniende incised with the artist’s initials and number “GK 2” on the underside bronze 20 1/4 x 8 5/8 x 9 in. (51.5 x 22 x 23 cm.) Executed circa 1928-1929, this work is from an edition of circa 20. Estimate $30,000-50,000 Provenance Margaret V. and Samuel A. Lewisohn, New York Thence by descent to the present owner Exhibited New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Lewisohn Collection: A Catalogue of the Paintings, Water Colors and Drawings, Prints, and Sculpture Shown in a Special Exhibition, November 2 December 2, 1951, no. 168, p. 22 (illustrated, p. 85) Literature Richard Scheibe, ed., Georg Kolbe in 100 Lichtdrucktafeln, Marburg, 1931, no. b, p. 76 (another example illustrated) Ursel Berger, Georg Kolbe, Leben und Werk, mit dem Katalog der Kolbe-Plastiken im Georg Kolbe Museum Berlin, Berlin, 1990, no. 115, p. 313 (another example illustrated)
211. Alberto Giacometti
1901-1966
Deux têtes signed and dated “Alberto Giacometti 1951” lower right crayon on paper 15 3/8 x 10 7/8 in. (39 x 27.8 cm.) Executed in 1951, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by the Fondation Alberto and Annette Giacometti. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Louis Broder (gifed directly by the artist) David Markin, Kalamazoo (acquired in 1963) Thence by descent to the present owner Exhibited Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Drawings from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. David Markin, June 18 - July 19, 1969 (erroneously dated 1957)
Property of an Important New York Collector
212. Henri Matisse
1869-1954
Nu campé bras sur la tête signed “Henri Matisse” lower right ink and graphite on paper 8 3/4 x 6 7/8 in. (22.2 x 17.5 cm.) Executed in 1906. The authenticity of this work was confrmed by Wanda de Guébriant in 1983 as confrmed by the Archives Matisse. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Estate of the Artist Private Collection, New York Vivian Horan, New York Marshall Cogan (acquired from the above) Private Collection (gifed by the above) Literature Pierre Schneider, Henri Matisse, Paris, 1984, p. 564 (illustrated)
213. Georges Rouault
1871-1958
Sodome ou Gomorrhe (Visage tragique) signed and dated “G. Rouault 1930” lower center gouache and pastel on paper 10 7/8 x 8 7/8 in. (27.8 x 22.5 cm.) Executed in 1930. Estimate $15,000-20,000 Provenance Zack Collection Margaret V. and Samuel A. Lewisohn, New York Thence by descent to the present owner Exhibited Chicago, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Paintings and Prints by George Rouault, October 5 - 31, 1945, no. 11 New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Georges Rouault: Paintings and Prints, April 4 – June 3, 1945, no. 60, p. 116 (illustrated, p. 79; titled as Tragic Face) New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Lewisohn Collection, November 2 - December 2, 1951, no. 71, p. 15 Cambridge, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1960 - 1970 (on extended loan) Boston, Institute of Modern Art (on loan) Literature Samuel A. Lewisohn, “Rouault - Master of Dissonance”, Parnassus, vol. 5, no. 6, November 1933, p. 6 (illustrated; titled as Figure) Lionello Venturi, Georges Rouault, New York, 1940, no. 131, p. 75 (illustrated; titled as Poupée, p. 107) Lionello Venturi, Rouault, Paris, 1948, no. 94, pp. 83, 115 (illustrated; titled as Poupée, p. 73) Isabelle Rouault and Bernard Dorival, Rouault, L’Oeuvre Peint, Monaco, 1988, no. 1287, p. 40 (illustrated)
Property from a Boise Collection
214. Pablo Picasso
1881-1973
Nu féminin / Deux études de danseuses espagnoles Conté crayon and ink on paper (double sided) 12 3/4 x 10 5/8 in. (32.5 x 27 cm.) Executed in 1901. Claude Picasso has kindly confrmed the authenticity of this work. Estimate $50,000-70,000 Provenance Estate of the Artist Marina Picasso Galerie Jan Krugier, Geneva Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, vol. 21, Supplément aux années 1892 - 1902, Paris, 1969, nos. 272, 273 (illustrated, p. 104) The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings & Sculpture, A Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue, 1885 - 1973, Turn of the Century, 1900-1902, San Francisco, 2010, nos. 1901478, 1901-479, p. 254 (illustrated)
verso
215. Manolo Valdés
b. 1942
Las señoritas de Avignon (Les Demoiselles d’Avignon) oil, twine, staples and burlap collage on burlap 90 3/8 x 80 3/8 x 2 3/4 in. (229.5 x 204 x 7 cm.) Executed in 1989. Estimate $250,000-350,000 Provenance Galería Freites, Caracas Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Caracas, Galería Freites, Manolo Valdés, October November 1990 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Manolo Valdés. Painting and Sculpture, October 18, 2002 - January 19, 2003, pp. 142, 143 (illustrated) Literature José María Salvador, Manolo Valdés, Re-tratar los iconos ancestrales, Caracas, 1990, no. 6, p. 34 (illustrated, p. 15)
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY, Artwork © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
216. Maurice Brazil Prendergast
1858-1924
Figures at the Shore signed “Prendergast” lower center edge watercolor and graphite on paper 10 3/4 x 14 5/8 in. (27.3 x 37 cm.) Executed circa 1920-1923. Estimate $15,000-20,000 Provenance Margaret V. and Samuel A. Lewisohn, New York Thence by descent to the present owner Literature Carol Clark, Nancy Mowll Mathews, and Gwendolyn Owens, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Charles Prendergast: A Catalogue Raisonné, Munich, 1990, no. 1377, p. 541 (illustrated)
217. Tomás Sánchez
b. 1948
Orilla: Espejo de las Nubes signed and dated “Tomás Sánchez 88” lower right; further signed, titled and dated “Tomás Sánchez “ORILLA” 1988 “ESPEJO DE LAS NUBES”” on the reverse acrylic on canvas 57 1/2 x 77 1/2 in. (146.2 x 197 cm.) Painted in 1988. Estimate $80,000-120,000 Provenance Galería Bernheim, Panama (acquired directly from the artist) Private Collection, Miami Cernuda Arte, Miami (acquired from the above in 2004) Acquired from the above by the present owner
218. Arnaldo Pomodoro
b. 1926
Rotante primo sezionale incised with the artist’s signature, title, number and date “Arnaldo Pomodoro 1968 Rotante 05 PA” on the base bronze diameter 5 7/8 in. (15 cm.) overall 6 7/8 x 8 1/8 x 8 1/8 in. (17.5 x 20.6 x 20.6 cm.) Executed circa 1966-1968, this work is number 5 from an edition of 5 plus 1 artist’s proof. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles Private Collection, Los Angeles Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angles Private Collection Phillips, New York, May 10, 2016, lot 245 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Exhibited Cologne, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Werke 1959-1969, July 18 - August 24, 1969 (another example exhibited) Literature Flaminio Gualdoni, Arnaldo Pomodoro: Catalogo ragionato della scultura, Tomo II, Milan 2007, no. 428, p. 534 (another example illustrated)
219. André Masson
1896-1987
Sémiramis et le Minotaure signed and dated “André Masson Juillet 1940” lower edge; titled “Sémiramis et le Minotaure” upper right; further inscribed and titled “II Sémiramis et le Minotaure” on the reverse ink on paper 18 3/4 x 24 5/8 in. (47.6 x 62.4 cm.) Executed in July 1940, this work is accompanied by a certifcate of authenticity issued by the Comité André Masson.
Provenance Galerie du Perron, Geneva Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1968
Estimate $7,000-10,000
Literature André Masson, Anatomie de mon univers, Marseille, 1988, pl. XXVI, n.p. (illustrated)
Exhibited Geneva, Galerie du Perron, André Masson, June 27 late August 1963, no. 11 New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Surrealism: Two Private Eyes, June 4 - September 12, 1999, no. 460, p. 543 (illustrated)
220. Maurice Utrillo
1883-1955
Rue à Stains (Seine-Saint-Denis) signed “Maurice. Utrillo. V.” lower right oil on canvas 19 7/8 x 28 7/8 in. (50.5 x 73.2 cm.) Painted circa 1910. Estimate $100,000-150,000 Provenance Adolph Lewisohn, New York Margaret V. and Samuel A. Lewisohn, New York (acquired by descent from the above) Thence by descent to the present owner Exhibited New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Lewisohn Collection: A Catalogue of the Paintings, Water Colors and Drawings, Prints, and Sculpture Shown in a Special Exhibition, November 2 December 2, 1951, no. 95, p. 16 (illustrated, p. 63) Cambridge, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1960 - 1970 (on extended loan) Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1973 and 1979 (on extended loan) Arlington, Vassar College Art Gallery (on extended loan) Literature Albert Morancé, ed., L’Art d’aujourd’hui, Autumn/ Winter 1924, no. IX, p. 49 (illustrated) Maurice Raynal, L’Art d’aujourd’hui, Maurice Utrillo, Paris, 1925, pl. IX (illustrated) Adolphe Basler, Maurice Utrillo, Paris, 1931, p. 33 (illustrated) Marius Mermillon, Collection des maîtres: Utrillo, Paris, 1948, p. 33 (illustrated) Jean Fabris and Cédric Paillier, L’oeuvre complet de Maurice Utrillo, Paris, 2009, no. 68, pp. 567, 693 (illustrated, p. 125)
221. Fernando de Szyszlo
1925-2017
Casa Ocho signed “Szyszlo” lower right; further titled, inscribed and dated “‘CASA-OCHO’ ORRANTIA/74” on the reverse oil on canvas 39 3/8 x 32 1/4 in. (99.9 x 81.8 cm.) Painted in 1974. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Galerías Las Américas, San Juan Acquired from the above by the present owner circa 1976
222. Hector Poleo
1918-1989
Cabeza de niña signed “Poleo” lower right oil on canvas 26 x 22 in. (66 x 56 cm.) Painted in 1964. Estimate $25,000-35,000 Provenance Private Collection, Europe (acquired by descent) Christie’s, New York, November 21, 2002, lot 125 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Actual size
Property from a Distinguished Los Angeles Collection
223. Richard Pettibone
b. 1938
Andy Warhol, ‘Two Marilyns’, 1962 signed, titled and dated “Andy Warhol, ‘Two Marilyns’, 1962 Richard Pettibone 2004” on the overlap silkscreen, oil and graphite on canvas, in artist’s frame 5 1/2 x 5 3/4 in. (14 x 14.6 cm.) Executed in 2004. Estimate $20,000-30,000
Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Private Collection Phillips, New York, November 8, 2011, lot 254 Private Collection JGM Galerie, Paris Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2014
224. Ed Ruscha
b. 1937
Nine Swimming Pools each signed, numbered and dated “Ed Ruscha 1968 1997 11/30” on the reverse chromogenic prints each 19 x 19 in. (48.3 x 48.3 cm.) Executed in 1968-1997, this set is number 11 from an edition of 30 plus 10 artist’s proofs and 1 printer’s proof. Estimate $60,000-80,000 Provenance Patrick Painter Editions, Hong Kong Mark Vanmoerkerke Collection, Ostende Phillips, London, April 3, 2008, lot 36 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Kunstmuseum Bonn; Miami, Museum of Contemporary Art, Great Illusions: Demand, Gursky, Ruscha, June 17 November 28, 1999, pp. 71-75 (other examples of Pool #1 – Pool #9 exhibited and illustrated) Paris, Galerie Daniel Templon, Ed Ruscha: Parking Lots and Swimming Pools, December 13, 2003 - January 21, 2004 (other examples of Pool #1 – Pool #9 exhibited) New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Ed Ruscha and Photography, June 24 - September 26, 2004, nos. 174, 175, p. 282 (other examples of Pool #7 and Pool #5 exhibited and illustrated, pp. 156, 157) New York, Yancey Richardson Gallery, Ed Ruscha: Pools, Parking Lots, Gasoline Stations, and Sunset Strip, September 22 - November 5, 2005 (other examples of Pool #1 – Pool #9 exhibited) Paris, Jeu de Paume; Kunsthaus Zürich; Cologne, Museum Ludwig, Ed Ruscha, Photographer, January 31 – November 26, 2006, nos. 124 - 127, p. 164 (other examples of Pool #6, Pool #7, Pool #8, and Pool #9 exhibited and illustrated, p. 122) Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Ed Ruscha and the Great American West, July 16 – October 9, 2016, nos. 85 – 93, p. 227 (other examples of Pool #1 – Pool #9 exhibited and illustrated, pp. 101, 226) Literature Siri Engberg and Clive Phillpot, eds., Edward Ruscha, Editions 1959-1999, Catalogue Raisonné, Volume I, Minneapolis, 1999, nos. 261-269, pp. 68 - 70 (other examples of Pool #1 – Pool #9 illustrated) Siri Engberg and Clive Phillpot, eds., Edward Ruscha, Editions 1959-1999, Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 2, Minneapolis, 1999, nos. 261-269, pp. 46, 118 (other examples of Pool #4, Pool #5, Pool #6 and Pool #7 illustrated, p. 47)
225. Richard Artschwager
1923-2013
D.M.B.R.T.W. and Potato acrylic on Celotex, in artist’s frame 48 x 56 in. (121.9 x 142.2 cm.) Executed in 1997.
Exhibited La Biennale di Venezia, XLVII Esposizione Internationale d’Arte, Future, Present, Past, 19671997, June 15 - November 9, 1997, p. 702
Estimate $30,000-40,000
Literature Laura Poletto, “Biennale di Venezia Documenta di Kassel 1997: prospettive sull’arte contemporanea”, Saggi e Memorie di storia dell’arte, vol. 32, Venice, 2008, p. 306
Provenance Mary Boone Gallery, New York Private Collection, New York Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago & New York Private Collection, Europe (acquired from the above in 2007)
226. James Rosenquist
1933-2017
Nails #2 signed and dated “Rosenquist 1975” on the reverse acrylic on canvas 20 x 36 in. (50.8 x 91.5 cm.) Painted in 1975. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Leo Castelli Gallery, New York Stable Castelli Gallery, Toronto Christie’s, New York, May 6, 1982, lot 139 BR Kornblatt Gallery, Washington, D.C. Private Collection Sotheby’s, New York, October 7, 1987, lot 113 Martin Lawrence Galleries, Sherman Oaks Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1988) Christie’s, New York, July 16 - 28, 2015, lot 17 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
153. William Baziotes
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Sale Information Auction 450 Park Avenue New York 10022 Wednesday, 13 November 2019, 10am Viewing 432 & 450 Park Avenue New York 10022 1 – 12 November Monday – Saturday 10am–6pm Sunday 12pm–6pm Sale Designation When sending in written bids or making enquiries please refer to this sale as NY010819 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
20th Century & Contemporary Art Department
Auction License 2013224
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 Susanna Brockman – 2058779 Rebekah Bowling - 2078967
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 Keisuke Anzai Alice Betherat Orlann Capazorio Lily Demgard Flavia Grilli Chanah Haddad Christine Knorr Andrea Koronkiewicz Jef Velazquez Emily Walker
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 Steve Orridge +1 212 940 1370 Anaar Desai +1 212 940 1320 Daren Khan +1 212 940 1335
Front Cover Larry Poons, Jessica’s Hartford, 1965, Lot 160 (detail) © 2019 Larry Poons/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Back Cover Robert Indiana, LOVE (Blue Outside Red Inside), 1966/1995, Lot 129 © 2019 Morgan Art Foundation Ltd/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Frontispieces Keith Haring, Untitled (Self Portrait), 1989, Lot 168 © The Keith Haring Foundation Robert Motherwell, Open No. 116: La France Open, 1969/1983/circa 1985, Lot 159 (detail) © 2019 Dedalus Foundation, Inc./Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, 1964, Lot 112, (detail) © 2019 Fondation Lucio Fontana/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Gerhard Richter, Donnerstag, 1983, Lot 167 (detail) © 2019 Gerhard Richter Andy Warhol, Four works: (i-iv) Man Ray, 1974, Lot 124 (detail) © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Ed Ruscha, Words #2, 1985, Lot 102 (detail) © Ed Ruscha Paul Klee, Der Exkaiser, 1921, Lot 136 (detail) © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Josef Albers, Homage to the Square: Silent Gray, 1955, Lot 141 (detail) © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Gerhard Richter, Rot-Blau-Gelb, 1972, Lot 115 (detail) © 2019 Gerhard Richter Gerhard Richter, Quattro Colori, 2008, Lot 122 (detail) © 2019 Gerhard Richter William Baziotes, Untitled, 1962, Lot 153 (detail) © William Baziotes Wifredo Lam, The Warrior (Personnage avec lézard), 1947, Lot 106 (detail) © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris Amelia Peláez, Piña, 1964, Lot 108 (detail) © Amelia Peláez Mary Corse, Untitled (Black White Inner Band, Beveled), 2006, Lot 112 (detail) © Mary Corse Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1962, Lot 116 (detail) © Cy Twombly Foundation Philip Guston, Untitled, 1963, Lot 119 (detail) © 2019 The Estate of Philip Guston Sturtevant, Stella Getty Tomb (First Study), 1988 (detail) © Estate Sturtevant, Paris Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Can #2, 1962, Lot 127 (detail) © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Roy Lichtenstein, Brushstroke Head IV (Barcelona Head), 1987, Lot 128 © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein Jean-Paul Riopelle, Port Coton, 1959, Lot 161 (detail) © 2019 Estate of Jean-Paul Riopelle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOCAN, Montreal
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Design Auction 17 December 2019 New York Public viewing 13 - 17 December at 450 Park Avenue or at phillips.com Enquiries designnewyork@phillips.com
Jeroen Verhoeven “Lectori Salutem,” 2010
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Index Albers, J. 130, 138–140
Klee, P. 133–136
Richter, Gerhard 115, 122, 167
Artschwager, R. 225
Kline, F. 155
Riopelle, J.-P. 158
Kolbe, G. 210
Rockburne, D. 101
Kusama, Y. 102, 113, 166, 188, 189
Rosenquist, J. 226
Basquiat, J.-M. 169
Rothenberg, S. 199
Baziotes, W. 153 Bourgeois, L. 154
Lam, W. 106, 107
Rouault, G. 213
Buren, D. 172
Leblanc, W. 143
Ruscha, E. 103, 114, 165, 224
Butterfeld, D. 185
LeWitt, S. 206 Lichtenstein, R. 126, 162, 192
Sánchez, T. 217 Serra, R. 176
Calder, A. 204 Chamberlain, J. 187
Mangold, R. 174
Shapiro, J. 183
Clark, E. 200
Marden, B. 119
Smith, T. 180
Corse, M. 112
Marin, J. 149
Soto, J. R. 178
Cruz-Diez, C. 177
Marini, M. 209
Stamos, T. 159
Masson, A. 219
Stella, F. 186
Dalí, S. 151
Matisse, H. 212
Sturtevant, E. 171
de Kooning, W. 120, 121, 128, 129
Matta, R. 207, 208
de Saint Phalle, N. 152
McCracken, J. 181
Takamatsu, J. 190
de Szyszlo, F. 221
Morley, M. 202
Tomasello, L. 144
Demuth, C. 147, 148
Motherwell, R. 156, 203
Turrell, J. 175
Dine, J. 131
Murray, E. 184
Twombly, C. 116
Ernst, M. 105
Narváez, F. 145
Utrillo, M. 220
Noguchi, I. 141 Feininger, L. 137
Noland, K. 179
Flavin, D. 111
O’Keefe, G. 150
Fontana, L. 110
Oldenburg, C. 132 Otterness, T. 193, 194
Giacometti, A. 211 Gilliam, S. 104, 197, 201
Peláez, A. 108, 109
Graham, R. 195
Pepper, B. 182
Guston, P. 117, 118, 161
Pettibone, R. 223 Picasso, P. 214
Hanson, D. 164
Poleo, H. 222
Haring, K. 168, 196
Polke, S. 170 Pomodoro, A. 146, 218
Indiana, R. 127
Poons, L. 157 Pousette-Dart, R. 160
Judd, D. 173
Valdés, M. 215 Vasarely, V. 142
Fishman, L. 198
Prendergast, M. B. 216
Warhol, A. 123–125, 163, 191, 205
KAWS AT THIS TIME bronze and paint 29.2 x 13.7 x 11.1 cm. 11 1/2 x 5 3/8 x 4 3/8 in. Executed in 2016, this work is number 15 from an edition of 25 plus 5 artist’s proofs.
20th Century & Contemporary Art and Design Hong Kong Day Sale 25 November 2019, 10:30am Viewing 22 - 24 November JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong Enquiries +852 2318 2027 danielleso@phillips.com
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106. Wifredo Lam
108. Amelia Pelรกez
112. Mary Corse
116. Cy Twombly
117. Philip Guston
171. Sturtevant
125. Andy Warhol
126. Roy Lichtenstein
158. Jean-Paul Riopelle
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