Sotheby’s is pleased to present our October sale of Important Prints & Multiples, which features an extensive selection of prints spanning the 19th century to the present day, including works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha and Kerry James Marshall. The sale will open with The M.C. Escher Collection of Dr. Bertram Selverstone, a group of over 40 prints by the enigmatic Dutch artist, featuring a number of rare images that have not appeared at auction in over a decade. Additional highlights of the auction range from an impression of Edvard Munch’s Vampire II and a rare lifetime edition of Jackson Pollock’s Untitled Portfolio of six screenprints to Robert Rauschenberg’s monumental Booster and Helen Frankenthaler’s celebrated woodcut Tales of Genji III.
The exhibition for this sale will open on Saturday, October 22nd at 10:00 AM and will close on Thursday, October 27th at 5 PM.
Bidding is currently open and will begin to close on Friday, October 28th at 12:00 PM EDT.
Jackson Pollock initially created the present screenprints to complement a 1951 exhibition of his black paintings at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City. First offered at $200 for the six and intended to be kept together as issued, it is now nearly impossible to find a set intact. This concept of editioned work offered alongside unique paintings foreshadowed Andy Warhol and his contemporaries, whose printmaking was more widely available thereby expanding his audience. Produced by Pollock and his brother Sanford McCoy in an edition of only 25, these works allude to the sinuous fluidity characteristic of Pollock’s unique compositions without directly replicating them.
"I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again…I see myself working with two things that don't even ask to understand each other."
