Willem De Kooning

Sidney Janis Gallery, New York
E.A. Navaretta, New York
Allan Stone Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York
Christie's New York, November 15, 2006, lot 45
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Willem de Kooning: Recent Paintings, April 1956, no. 12
Houston, University of Saint Thomas, Six Paintings: Mondrian, Guston, Kline, de Kooning, Pollock and Rothko, February - April 1967, no. 39
Detroit, JL Hudson Gallery, de Kooning: Three Decades of Painting, March - April 1968
New York, Allan Stone Gallery, Liquifying Cubism, October 1994 - January 1995, pl. no. 41, illustrated in color
New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, NYNY: City of Ambition, July - October 1996, p. 120, illustrated in color

Thomas B. Hess, Willem de Kooning, New York, 1959, no. 146, illustrated
Exh. Cat., New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, De Kooning, 1962, fig. 43, illustrated (1956 Sidney Janis exhibition installation)

This work is in very good condition overall. Along the top edge, the wood support is visible and there are intermittent chips to the edge primarily located 7 - 7 3/8 in. from the upper left corner. Where the paint application is the thickest, particularly in the yellow pigment, there are patterns of cracquelere associated with the drying process. These appear stable. There are scattered pin holes in the corners dating from the time of execution. Along the bottom edge there are slight lifts and minor losses to the paper edge located 6 1/8 - 6 1/4 in. from the left corner and 12 - 12 1/4 in. from the right corner. There is a slight scratch located 9 - 9 1/8 in. from the left edge and 10 - 10 1/4 in. down from the top edge. Under Ultraviolet light there are no apparent restorations. This painting is framed in a gold faced wood strip frame with a float.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In 1955, Willem de Kooning entered one of the periods in his oeuvre when he moved away from the subject matter of women and turned towards total abstraction in his other genre - "landscapes" - such as Sagamore.  This masterful work emphasizes the authority of autonomous bold brushstrokes, in which de Kooning's pigment twists, smears and flays across the pictorial surface.  De Kooning was the most important artist of the Abstract Expressionist movement.  In his lengthy career, he is the most written about, received the most accolades, enjoyed the most exhibitions, and has the largest and most varied body of work.  As both artist and personality, he bridged the gap between the ordered dream state of Arshile Gorky and the passionate and instinctual abandon of Jackson Pollock, the other pillar of the post-war New York school of painting.   Sagamore is painted with a deliberate and controlling logic of constant revision with each connective brushstroke enlivened by vibrant colors. The decisive breaks in the picture plane add a sense of frenetic movement and graphic contrapposto to the composition.

Although painted on paper, Sagamore dramatically resembles de Kooning's monumental paintings on canvas from the same period.  These works are ambitious and "noisy" paintings completed during the height of Abstract Expressionism with an abundance of spatial congestion and muscularity.  Titles are not literally descriptive, yet do refer to specific times or places in the artist's life.  Similar to the important urban landscapes, Gotham News and Street Corner Incident, the present work is composed of layered abstract forms that become both the background and the foreground, sending the entire pictorial field into flux.  The painting seems formed out of other paintings with a collaged affect. No single point of departure or vanishing point is privileged; rather there is an interlocking mesh of colors and a stark delineation of endlessly ebbing and flowing forms.  In the urban landscapes, brushstrokes condense the pace of New York City and its instant irritability – they are deliberately brash and seem as if they are hurrying to get somewhere.  The viewer can truly "feel" the vitality and colorful disorder of the city.    As Judith Zilczer notes, "in the urban landscapes from the mid-1950s de Kooning probed the `intimate proportions' of the city.  He re-created and enlarged humble fragments of the urban environment.  Where other twentieth century painters and photographers had glorified the monumental architecture, geometric precision, and grandeur of the city, de Kooning located the essence of metropolis in its teeming life and irrational violence and in the clutter of peeling billboards or the scattered refuse of city streets." (Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (and travelling), Willem de Kooning  from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1993, p. 56)

The vibrant yellow, purple and blue hues that dominate Sagamore indicate de Kooning's profound attention to light that would consume his later paintings of the decade and beyond, following the move to the new landscape of Long Island. The frenzied proliferation of stroke, form and plane of the urban landscapes has now here been slightly reduced, lending Sagamore a relatively intimate restraint and clarity.  The broad simplification makes prominent the manner of de Kooning's paint application and the resultant textural complexities of the medium of oil paint.  The simplification and limitation of the number of the artist's gestures, which served to expand the picture plane, as well as an adoption of a specifically lighter palette that tended towards yellows and pinks better suited to the smaller scale, created compressed yet joyful compositions such as Sagamore.  Henry Geldzahler wrote of de Kooning's painting at this time, they are "...packed with shapes, allusions, actions and counteraction, they pile ambiguity on ambiguity; sometimes, it would seem, they are painted at lightning speed, at others in a more relaxed contour – loving gesture." (Exh. Cat., New York, Willem de Kooning: Abstract Landscapes, 1955 – 1963, 1987, n.p.)  The present work is a brilliant example of both of these approaches.

De Kooning truly acted as a decisive leader in the formative years of the New York art scene.  In April of 1956, his solo show at Sidney Janis, which included Sagamore, was an instant success that determinedly solidified the artist's renown.  At this time both American and European collectors alike became seriously interested in de Kooning's abstractions and he quickly became a popular and commercially successful artist.   The sweeping gestures in the present work represent the artist at his most liberated.  Not even the landscape stands in the way of his act of painting. De Kooning's oeuvre reflects a sensibility that embraces both classic and romantic tendencies and an overall deep respect for paint handling and abstract forms so clearly apparent in this exemplary work from the height of the artist's career.