Doyle will hold an auction of 20th Century Abstraction on Wednesday, October 6 at 11am. The sale showcases abstract art spanning the 1940s through the end of the century and will include paintings, drawings, sculpture and prints. From the American Abstract Expressionists, as well as several prototypical artists that predated them, the auction documents the global evolution of abstraction within and beyond the fabled New York School; including Color Field artists, hard-edge abstraction, the Washington Color School, Minimalism and much more.

The public is invited to the exhibition on view Saturday, October 2 through Monday, October 4 at Doyle, located at 175 East 87th Street in New York. View the catalogue and place bids at DOYLE.com

Adolph Gottlieb
Adolph Gottlieb's “Burst” series began in 1957 with Blast I, a painting in the permanent collection of MoMA. This is the third and final major series of paintings Gottlieb produced. A Heavy Matter is a prime example of Gottlieb’s “Burst” paintings, balancing a serene oval of color hovering atop a busy group of black gestural strokes on the lower half of the work, with a brilliant touch of blue at lower right (Lot 22).

Donald Judd
Painted in 1955, a rare early work by Donald Judd seems to depict in colorful, architectural detail Judd’s struggle with the inherent two-dimensionality of painting. While some of the forms explored here are repeated in Judd’s later works, there is only one other similar example in the permanent collection of the Judd Foundation (Lot 6).

Karel Appel
The CoBrA Group artist Karel Appel is represented by two works on paper, including a 1959 work. This untitled work is representative of the Group’s methods; colorful and busy abstractions taking influence from art made by children and untrained artists (Lot 10).

Elaine deKooning
Toro I, circa 1959 is a powerful work on paper by Elaine de Kooning. The gestural strokes are bold and fluid, depicting an oft-used subject of deKooning’s -- bulls and bullfighting (Lot 28).

Theodoros Stamos
A large-scale canvas from 1976, Theodoros Stamos’ “Infinity Field: Lefkada Series" is a bold color field abstraction. One of the youngest of the Irascibles, the Greek-born Stamos employed biomorphic shapes in his abstract works (Lot 43).

Billy Al Bengston
A member of Los Angeles’ legendary Ferus Gallery roster, Billy Al Bengston introduced industrial techniques such as spray paint to the West Coast abstract art of the 60s and 70s. From 1977, Castor Draculas features Bengston’s “Dracula” motif, which was an image of an iris logo appropriated from a sugar packet (Lot 53).

Nancy Graves
Possibly a take on “hecht,” the German word for fish, Hekt by Nancy Graves showcases the artist’s incredible use of color and gesture. Graves often sourced imagery from science and nature periodicals, though her works were typically pure abstractions with no narrative, nor a defined foreground or background (Lot 54).