First Look: Monet, Pollock, Basquiat and More On View in London

Jackson Pollock, Number 32, 1949

Jackson Pollock’s Number 32, 1949 is one of a small number of paintings the artist made that more fully explore the subtleties of the drip technique. Pollock created just 16 drip paintings on paper –many of which he then mounted on Masonite, canvas, or composition board – in 1949, and Number 32, 1949 is one of eight that feature aluminum paint, creating a lustrous shimmer highlighting the artist’s elaborate gestural movements. Boasting a fully painted surface with intricate layers of dripped and poured oil, enamel and aluminum paint, the work has one of the most complete and richly covered surfaces of the entire series.

Contemporary Art Evening Auction
16 May | New York

View Auction

Share

Pablo Picasso, Le Repos, 1932
Estimate: $25,000,000-35,000,000

Picasso’s Le Repos dazzles in a bright palette of verdant greens, crimsons, whites and purples. Within the artist’s oeuvre sensual paintings of his sleeping lover and muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, reign supreme as the emblems of love, sex and desire in twentieth-century art. The rank and uncomplicated avowal of Picasso’s intoxicating desire and passionate love for his ‘golden muse’ is particularly evident in this work.

Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale
14 May | New York

View Lot

View Auction

Share

Joan Miró, Femme, oiseau, 1969-74
Estimate: $10,000,000-15,000,000

The frenetic expressiveness of Miró’s brushwork in Femme, oiseau is a poetic example of gestural abstraction at its most daring. The bold reds, vibrant ultramarine blues and black voids, coupled with the arresting nature of the work’s colossal scale, demonstrates the amplitude of expressive freedom and bold exuberance that characterized the mature period of Miró’s career.

Raising The Bar: Masterworks from the Collection of Morton and Barbara Mandel
16 May | New York

View Auction

Share

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Flesh and Spirit, 1982-83

Jean-Michel Basquiat's Flesh and Spirit pays homage to Robert Farris Thompson’s seminal 1983 text Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Philosophy, which Basquiat himself declared the best book on African art. The painting is rich with many of the central themes and subjects of the artist’s revolutionary practice, with symbols found throughout his oeuvre such as an exploration of the human anatomy and scrawled terminology, which appear on a furiously worked surface of oil stick, gesso, acrylic, and paper collage.

Contemporary Art Evening Auction
16 May | New York

View Auction

Share

Willem de Kooning, Untitled VI, 1980
Estimate: $8,000,000-12,000,000

Untitled VI explodes with color across this magnificent canvas, dating from a watershed moment when Willem de Kooning returned to painting following a period in which he had focused on sculpture. Executed in lush, sensuous brushstrokes, Untitled VI perfectly illustrates de Kooning’s deft mastery of oil paint at this particular moment in his career.

Raising The Bar: Masterworks from the Collection of Morton and Barbara Mandel
16 May | New York

View Auction

Share

Roy Lichtenstein, Still Life with Head in Landscape, 1976
Estimate: $7,000,000-10,000,000

Roy Lichtenstein’s Still Life With Head in Landscape features the artist’s iconic blonde girl set in a compressed space redolent with Surrealist symbolism. A paradigm of the artist’s celebrated Surrealist paintings, Still Life With Head in Landscape is one of few works from this series left in private hands, with many examples held in renowned institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, among others.

Raising The Bar: Masterworks from the Collection of Morton and Barbara Mandel
16 May | New York

View Auction

Share

Pablo Picasso, Femme assise, 1949
Estimate: $6,000,000-8,000,000

Picasso’s Femme assise is comprised of a complex language of geometric arrangements that return to the fragmented pictorial forms associated with the artist’s revolutionary Cubist works. A hallmark subject in the artist’s oeuvre, the seated nude sits regally in her throne, looming large in the eyes of the both the artist and viewer.

Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale
14 May | New York

View Lot

View Auction

Share

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1969
Estimate: $7,000,000-10,000,000

Mark Rothko’s Untitled from 1969 is an archetype of the artist’s legendary color-field compositions. While much of Rothko’s late work is characterized by a darker palette, Untitled boasts a ground of brilliant red emerging from serene fields of white and a warm orange and represents the culmination of Rothko’s career-long pursuit of aesthetic transcendence through pure color and light.

Raising The Bar: Masterworks from the Collection of Morton and Barbara Mandel
16 May | New York

View Auction

Share

Andy Warhol, Flowers, 1964
Estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000

Andy Warhol’s Flowers from 1964 is a prime example from the artist’s Flower series. Executed in an intensely blue palette crisply rendered against a vibrant green background, Flowers is a brilliant example from this renowned body of work.

Raising The Bar: Masterworks from the Collection of Morton and Barbara Mandel
16 May | New York

View Auction

Share

Barnett Newman, Galaxy, 1949

Barnett Newman’s Galaxy from 1949 is the first painting in which the artist featured two of his iconic and revolutionary ‘zips,’ the stylistic element that has come to define the artist’s output. Most recently, Galaxy was included in exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, Abstract Expressionism, the long-awaited show that celebrated Barnett Newman and his peers, including Clyfford Still, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and David Smith, among others.

Contemporary Art Evening Auction
16 May | New York

View Auction

Share

Claude Monet, Matinée sur la Seine, 1896
Estimate: $18,000,000 - 25,000,000

A meditation in sky and water, trees and shrubs, reflection and suspension, Matinée sur la Seine embodies the purest aspect of Claude Monet’s dedication to light, nature and atmosphere. Monet painted the famed series of Matinée sur la Seine in his studio boat at the confluence of the river Epte and the Seine. Capturing the effects of the dawning sun, this canvas is one of the most highly nuanced of the series, the majority of which are held in museum collections.

Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale
14 May | New York

View Lot

View Auction

Share

Pablo Picasso, Femme au Chien, 1953
Estimate: $12,000,000-18,000,000

Pablo Picasso’s Femme au chien displays the artist’s masterful use of color and line while portraying one of the artist’s most charming subjects. Picasso’s love of dogs is well documented both in his work – from the Rose period to his last years and in his personal life where dogs – not to mention goats, owls and all sorts of other fauna – inhabited his living and working spaces.

Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale
14 May | New York

View Lot

View Auction

Share

Fernand Léger, Dessin pour "Contraste de formes No. 2", 1913-1914
Estimate: $3,000,000-4,000,000

In 1913 Léger embarked on a series of works collectively entitled Contrastes de formes that are now recognized as his most important contribution to twentieth century art. This revolutionary series, which consisted of some of the first abstract paintings and works on paper, were developed through Léger’s pursuit of the concept of "Pure Art" a style of representation that was devoid of direct reference to visual reality, yet which explores the relationship between shape and tone through geometric abstraction.

Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale
14 May | New York

View Lot

View Auction

Share

Robert Ryman, Untitled, circa 1964

Robert Ryman’s Untitled is painterly expression at its most primal. Without the illusionistic tools of representation or an expressive array of color, the present work is reduced to the most basic elements of paint and support. This set of limitations enables Ryman to enact a process of pictorial experimentation resulting in a work that exceeds standard definitions of the medium.

Contemporary Art Day Auction
17 May | New York

Share

David Hockney, The Only One With Waves, 1991

David Hockney’s The Only one with Waves gives unparalleled insight into the artist’s development and process. The present work captures Hockney in a transition from mimetic representation to abstraction, illustrating the power of the ocean with myriad painterly techniques and the kaleidoscopic use of color for which is the artist is best known.

Contemporary Art Day Auction
17 May | New York

Share

Peter Doig, Pink Snow, 1996

Pink Snow is exemplary of Peter Doig’s “snow” paintings, a concise body of work within the artist’s oeuvre that is unique for its depictions of grand, often unobscured and sparse winter settings. Acting as a testament to Doig’s artistic prowess, the subjects and landscape within Pink Snow are depicted with a strict economy of form, in large sections, and with oblique strokes, all of which coalesce to craft the air of mystery and longing which characterizes the artist’s best work.

Contemporary Art Day Auction
17 May | New York

Share