Sotheby’s Lifts the Curtain on
One of the Most Important Sales Series Ever Staged
$1 BILLION WORTH OF ART ACROSS 7 SALES IN 1 WEEK
– Unveiled Today in Sotheby’s New York Galleries –
From The Legendary Macklowe Collection
Through to ‘The Now’ Auction, Dedicated to Today’s Frontrunners
AUCTIONS 15-19 NOVEMBER
**Public Exhibitions Now Open**
**Media Welcome to Today’s Press Preview at 9:00am ET and Throughout the Day**
NEW YORK, 5 November 2021 – Featuring more than 680 lots that together comprise one of the most important sale series ever staged, the full complement of Sotheby’s November auction week is today unveiled to the public in its entirety in Sotheby’s New York Galleries.
Carrying a combined estimate in the region of $1 billion, the exhibition and sales will be anchored by the celebrated Macklowe Collection – one of the greatest collections of any kind ever to come to the market. The November offering will include 35 works from the collection, each one a masterpiece in its own right. (See here and here for further details). These will be presented alongside three further Evening sales, featuring standout works from the late 19th century through to art executed in the last 20 years, including Banksy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mark Bradford, Leonora Carrington, Jordan Casteel, Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Claude Monet, Yoshitomo Nara, and many more, as well as 50 works from the collection of the storied art collector and great television production Douglas S. Cramer, including Roy Lichtenstein’s masterpiece Two Paintings…Craig – a gift from the artist and a symbol of their close friendship.
The week of evening sales will also include a dedicated, single lot auction of The Constitution of the United States, sold to benefit the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation. [See auction schedule below]
In what is set to be one of the most sophisticated hybrid auctions staged to date, Sotheby’s salesroom will once again welcome clients back to the auction room for each sale, with auctioneer Oliver Barker fielding bids from room and online bidders alike, as well as from colleagues on telephone banks in New York, London and Hong Kong.
Sotheby’s pre-sale exhibitions for the Contemporary, Modern and The Now Evening Auctions will be presented in partnership with Samsung, the world’s leading TV manufacturer. (Further details below)
NEW YORK NOVEMBER SALE WEEK AUCTIONS
Tune in live to watch each of the sales via the links below
15 November 2021
7.00 PM EST
16 November 2021
7.00 PM EST
17 November 2021
10.00 AM EST
18 November 2021
6.00 PM EST
The Constitution of the United States
18 November 2021
6.30 PM EST
18 November 2021
7.00 PM EST
19 November 2021
10.00 AM EST
Selected highlights from the forthcoming season:
MODERN EVENING AUCTION:
- Frida Kahlo’s 1949 self-portrait, Diego y yo (Diego and I): Kahlo’s final, fully realized ‘bust’ self-portrait completed before her death in 1954, this enigmatic double portrait with the artist’s husband, Diego Rivera, is a quintessential example of her singular approach to portraiture. Estimated at $30/50m, this intense and emotional work is poised to shatter her current auction record of $8 million achieved in 2016, and may become the most valuable work of Latin American art ever sold at auction. To be offered in the Modern Art Evening sale. See dedicated release here.
- Claude Monet’s magnificent Coin du bassin aux nymphéas from 1918, a late masterpiece displaying the artist’s famous waterlilies in his Giverny garden, comes to the market later this month for the first time in nearly 25 years with an estimate in excess of $40m. The work is joined in the Modern Art Evening Auction by a further three paintings by Monet, including his 1888 Coastal scene, Antibes vue de la Salis, which captures the seductive scenery of southern France (estimate $10/15 million). Separate release on Coin du bassin aux nymphéas available here.
- Surrealism features large in the Modern Art Evening sale, highlighted by:
- Rene Magritte’s 1966 Le Droit chemin (estimate $7/9 million), a late masterpiece featuring a monolith and a stone apple which together illustrate the idea that seemingly unrelated objects bear some fundamental commonality. Magritte gifted Le Droit chemin in the year it was painted (need to confirm) to the Israel Museum at the suggestion of the dealer Margaret Krebs, where it remained for over four decades.
- Salvador Dalí’s L’Angélus belongs to a small number of related works, nearly all of which are held in museum collections (estimate $4/6 million). Having first belonged to the artist’s friend, surrealist painter Georges Hugnet, and unseen by the public until the twenty-first century, the work – which reflects Dali’s obsession with Jean-François Millet’s L’Angélus – has featured prominently in virtually every major exhibition dedicated to Dalí since that time.
- Additional surrealist highlights include Leonor Fini’s Les Aveugles (estimate $200/300,000), following last season’s record-breaking sale for the artist’s Autoportrait au scorpion at Sotheby’s New York ($2.3 million).
- Alexander Calder’s monumental Untitled from 1949 (estimate $10/15 million) – a magnificent early example of the artist’s iconic hanging mobiles. Spanning more than ten by fourteen feet, and characterized by a single red element amidst an all-black framework, Untitledis not only an immense technical achievement but also a remarkably exquisite aesthetic triumph.
- Pierre Soulages’s Peinture 195 x 130 cm, 4 août 1961, from the apex of the artist’s most highly-sought-after period of production in the late 1950s and early 1960s (estimate $8/12 million). Acquired in 1989, the work has remained in the same esteemed private French collection for over three decades and is among the finest examples by the artist to appear at auction in recent years. This painting is one of fewer than 10 truly red masterworks executed during the peak of the artist’s career, only three of which are of a comparable scale — marking this work as exceptionally rare.
- Lee Krasner’s Vigil from 1960 is a masterwork from Krasner’s pivotal Umber paintings – the artist’s most widely celebrated body of work (estimate $4.5/6.5 million). Of the approximately twenty-four Umber paintings, eight reside in major institutional collections. Executed between 1959 and 1962, the Umbers represent the intense period of creative production Krasner experienced in coping with the death of her husband, Jackson Pollock. Suffering from insomnia, Krasner created many of the Umbers at night. The title of this work is particularly evocative of this experience, suggesting contemplative wakefulness during hours typically spent asleep.
CONTEMPORARY EVENING AUCTION
- Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1982 Made in Japan II (estimate $12/18 million) has an exceptional provenance, having resided in important private collections, including those of Kenz? Takada and Enrico Navarra – the artist’s gallerist and editor of the celebrated monograph on Basquiat. The work speaks to Basquiat’s deep admiration of Japan, and the influence the country had on him. Remarkable for its large size, electrifying color, and compositional complexity, the haunting skull-like head as seen in this work represents a pivotal moment within Basquiat’s developing practice, with the motif prevailing as a key element within Basquiat’s oeuvre and appearing in the majority of his best-known masterworks.
- Roy Lichtenstein’s Two Paintings…Craig (estimate $12/18 million) will be offered alongside works by Cecily Brown, Ellsworth Kelly and more, from the collection of acclaimed producer and collector Douglas S. Cramer.
- Additional works from esteemed private collections further highlight the sale:
- Paintings from the remarkable collection of designer, taste-making architect and an aesthetic adviser Bill Katz, including Robert Indiana’s Love (estimate $150/250,000), 5 (estimate $250/350,000), and Agnes Martin’s Innocent Love (estimate $300/400,000), which were all gifted to Katz directly from the artists in the year they were created.
- Works from the Estate of Gabriele and Robert Lee, led by Philip Guston’s Ominous Land, a brilliant fusion of politically charged imagery and satirical self-portraiture for an incredibly relevant and powerful social commentary (estimate $6/8 million), and Alighiero Boetti’s Mappa from 1984, one of the most exquisite examples from the artist’s acclaimed series (estimate $1.5/2 million)
- Two exceptional Romare Bearden collages from the estate of esteemed collector David Lebenbom: The Street (estimate $500/700,000) and The Cardplayers (estimate $400/600,000).
THE NOW EVENING AUCTION
- Yoshitomo Nara’s 1996 Nice to See You Again, a rare, large-scale early work will appear on the market for the first time in more than 15 years (estimate $8/12 million). Nara is one of the leading artists of our time, and his depictions of seemingly-innocent but menacing little girls are his best-known subject. A similar work, Knife Behind Back, was sold for a record-breaking $25m in 2019, since when Nara has remained one of the most in-demand artists working today.
- Banksy’s Trolley Hunters– a typically powerful, witty and prophetic critique of society’s often irrational predilection for processed and packaged products and a prescient work that preempts the disruption to the global supply chain that has today exposed the fragility of our fast-paced consumerist eco-system, will make its auction debut this November (estimate $5/7 million, separate release available)
- Mark Bradford’s Method Man from 2004 is a standout example of the artist’s acclaimed abstract practice, – acquired in the year it was executed and held in the same private collection ever since (estimate $5/7 million)
- Thomas Schütte’s monumental outdoor sculpture Großer Geist Nr. 1 – a remarkable example of one of the artist’s most revered bodies of work, and one of only three sculptures from the series in polished bronze, the other two of which are in institutional collections. (estimate $4.5/6.5 million).
- Works by young, next generation artists round out the sale, including Toyin Ojih Odutola, Adam Pendleton, Flora Yukhnovich, Lisa Brice, María Berrío (making her world auction debut), Christina Quarles, and Jordan Casteel.
PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SAMSUNG
Sotheby’s pre-sale exhibitions for the Contemporary, Modern and The Now Evening Auctions open today, and are presented in partnership with Samsung, the world’s leading TV manufacturer. As part of the exhibition experience, Samsung will showcase the ultimate embodiment of its flagship TV lineup– the Neo QLED TV in a monumental 98 inches. Arranged as part of the exhibition alongside some of the most significant artworks of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, the ultra-premium Samsung Neo QLED, which features Quantum Mini LEDs to deliver precise lighting and clarity, will showcase digital art and NFTs in their best form, including digital artist Krista Kim’s Mars House. Generously loaned from the collection of AOI (Art of the Internet), Mars House is the first ever digital house NFT and the finest example of one to ever exist. Stepping into Mars House is both meditation and mind-blowing. The color palette, light and music, made with musician Jeff Schroeder of The Smashing Pumpkins, combine to create immense calm.
