Works by Cy Twombly, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Yayoi Kusama, Marc Chagall, Mark Bradford and Amy Sherald to be Offered in One of the Strongest Sales in Phillips’ History

New York Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art on 15 November to Feature Works of Exceptional Provenance Spanning the Breadth of the Category

NEW YORK – 31 OCTOBER 2022 – Phillips is pleased to announce that the full catalogue for the November Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art is now available online.  Comprised of 46 lots and expected to realize in excess of 118.5 million, the auction is poised to become one of the most successful auctions in Phillips’ history. The sale will be led by Untitled from the suite of Bacchus paintings executed between 2003-2008 by Cy Twombly, with additional highlights by Mark Bradford, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Amy Sherald, Marc Chagall, Willem de Kooning, Yves Klein, and Andy Warhol also on offer.  The public exhibition of the works at 432 Park Avenue in New York will open on 5 November, with the Evening Sale taking place on 15 November at 6pm, to be followed by the Day Sale on 16 November, opening with the Morning Session at 10am, followed by the Afternoon Session at 2pm.

Jean-Paul Engelen, President, Americas and Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, said, “We are proud to usher in the November auction season with such strong sales of 20th Century & Contemporary Art. On the heels of our most successful season to date, it’s clear that the momentum has continued into the fall, with demand across the board for Modern, Post-War, and Contemporary works. With every stop on our global tour – from London and Paris to Southampton and the launch of our brand-new space in Los Angeles – we saw an outpouring of enthusiasm and look forward to welcoming our community of collectors into 432 Park Avenue for the Evening Sale on 15 November.”

Robert Manley, Deputy Chairman and Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, said, “This season, the efforts of our international team are on full display with the works across our November sales showcasing the results of the important relationships we have cultivated across the industry. Works of exceptional provenance are on offer, with 80% of the lots in our Evening Sale having never before been sold at auction. From the Marc Chagall portrait that has been rightfully restituted by the French government to the descendants of its original owner to the early Andy Warhol paintings straight from the Warhola Family Collection, this auction brings together a stellar group of artworks representing the full breadth of the category.”

Leading the sale is the previously announced painting by Cy Twombly. Estimated at $35-45 million and at a monumental sixteen feet wide, this work is one of the artist’s largest works to ever appear at auction.

Phillips first introduced Mark Bradford to auction in 2008 and as the current record-holder for his work, Phillips has defined the market for this leading voice of contemporary abstraction. A monumental example, He Barked Just Like a Watchdog, 2011, is among the Evening Sale’s highlights and emblematic of his distinctive visual lexicon. Executed the year of Bradford’s major mid-career traveling retrospective and nearly twelve feet wide, the gestural style and heroic scale of the present work are inspired by a recent trip the artist had taken to Morocco, reflecting Bradford’s engagement with the breadth of the canon of abstraction.

As the market leader for Amy Sherald’s work, Phillips is proud to offer two major works by the artist in the Evening Sale – Pilgrimage of the Chameleon and Madame Noire. In Madame Noire, Sherald engages with the “droogs” from Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange to subvert prevalent narratives of class, sexuality, and respectability for Black women. The title of the work provides three overlapping courses of interpretation. Madame Noire could be a reference to Black lifestyle media brand, MadameNoire; to Madam C.J. Walker, the first female self-made millionaire; or, perhaps, to historical Black sex workers, particularly brothel owners, or madams. The character is both real and fantastic, a symbolically rich example of Sherald’s signature portrait style.

Following Phillips’ world record for Yayoi Kusama in May, the Evening Sale in November will offer another early Infinity Nets painting by the artist with Nets Blue, painted in 1960.

A strong selection of Abstract Expressionist works will also be on offer in the Evening Sale, with the sale of Willem de Kooning’s Untitled, circa 1977, marking a rediscovery of one of the artist’s most significant paintings on paper from one of his most celebrated periods, the late 1970s. At 60 x 40 inches, it is of a scale and quality that is on par with his greatest achievements painted directly on canvas. The painting was notably featured in one of the most important documentaries on de Kooning, by the filmmaker, Erwin Leiser, whose three documentaries remain the definitive filmed resource on the artist.  An especially dynamic example of this period Untitled has remained in the same private collection since its initial acquisition in 1988.

On the heels of Phillips’ Spring Sale of Yves Klein’s Relief Éponge bleu sans titre (RE 49), which realized $20 million, Phillips is proud to present  La Chair (ANT 71). The work is rendered in his signature International Klein Blue medium and is from a unique subset within the groundbreaking Anthropométries series. While others represent largely static impressions of models, this small dynamic grouping including La Chair (ANT 71) appear as bodily imprints leaping off the surfaces. They showcase Klein’s revolutionary spirit just as he began his acclaimed series in 1960, one of the pivotal developments in avant-garde painting.

The market demand for Marlene Dumas has soared, in part due to her highly acclaimed survey at the Palazzo Grassi during this year’s Venice Biennale. Snow White in the Wrong Story, 1988, is an exceptionally strong painting by the artist and among the contemporary highlights of the sale. In the late 1980s, Marlene Dumas made several paintings featuring Snow White or references to the Grimm Brothers’ character. All of these, with exception of the present work, are now part of respected museum collections, housed in the Kunstmuseum, The Hague, the Museum of Art Arnhem, and the Centraal Museum, Utrecht.

A monumental triptych created at the height of Alex Katz’s career, The Grey Dress, 1982, is emblematic of the artist’s singular painterly practice that transforms his figural subjects into timeless visual icons. One of the artist’s largest works at auction to date at fifteen feet wide, The Grey Dress ambitiously captures Katz’s fascination with surface and appearance in both subject and painting. The work comes to auction with Katz’s market achieving new heights, especially alongside his current retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York.

The Evening Sale will also feature a strong selection of Modern works, a testament to the continued demand for the category. As previously announced, Marc Chagall’s Le Père is the first of the fifteen works restituted by the French government this year to come to auction.  

René Magritte’s 1964 work Le météore is the culmination of the artist’s decades-long interrogation of the enigmatic possibilities of anthropomorphism. The play on portraiture depicts a horse whose features conform with human standards of beauty—glassy blue eyes, arched brows, and wavy, long blonde tresses. A miniature turret impossibly rests atop her head, reminiscent of a unicorn’s horn. Evoking the composition and radiance of Florentine Renaissance portraits, this mystifying scene is executed in the artist’s iconic hard-edge idiom, an emblem of his mature style situating the viewer in a convincing dreamscape that transcends all logic and reason.

Continuing the house’s reputation for bringing emerging artists to the fore, Phillips is also proud to debut at auction for the first time works by Ilana Savdie and Danica Lundy.

Auction: 15 November 2022

Auction viewing: 5 November – 15 November

Location: 432 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022

Click here for more information: https://www.phillips.com/auctions/auction/NY010722                    

ABOUT PHILLIPS

Phillips is a leading global platform for buying and selling 20th and 21st century art and design. With dedicated expertise in the areas of 20th Century and Contemporary Art, Design, Photographs, Editions, Watches, and Jewelry, Phillips offers professional services and advice on all aspects of collecting. Auctions and exhibitions are held at salerooms in New York, London, Geneva, and Hong Kong, while clients are further served through representative offices based throughout Europe, the United States and Asia. Phillips also offers an online auction platform accessible anywhere in the world.  In addition to providing selling and buying opportunities through auction, Phillips brokers private sales and offers assistance with appraisals, valuations, and other financial services.

Visit www.phillips.com for further information.

*Estimates do not include buyer’s premium; prices achieved include the hammer price plus buyer’s premium.