The 51 lots on offer will open for public view on 1 November in Sotheby’s York Avenue galleries, alongside the Contemporary Art Day Auction as well as our November sales of Impressionist & Modern Art.

EVENING AUCTION HIGHLIGHTS

WILLEM DE KOONING’S UNTITLED XXIIExecuted at a critical moment in Willem de Kooning’s career, Untitled XXII from 1977 represents the apex of the artist’s mature output (estimate $25/35 million). Exhausted by the noise and tension of life in Manhattan during the early part of his career, de Kooning spent summers in East Hampton beginning in 1959, and permanently moved to Springs in 1963 to immerse himself in the light-filled, tranquil environment. Although Untitled XXII remains abstract, it evokes the essence, memories, and experience of de Kooning’s oceanic and peaceful surroundings which captivated the artist, reminding him of his childhood home in Holland. Marking the artist’s return to painting after a hiatus focused on drawing and sculpture, Untitled XXII is part of an explosive outpouring of creativity that produced an illustrious body of large-scale, color-drenched canvases that rank among the most iconic achievements of de Kooning’s career.

MARK ROTHKO’S BLUE OVER RED

Blue Over Red represents the first work from Mark Rothko’s critical year of 1953 to appear at auction in over a decade (estimate $25/35 million). The painting a critical period of development in the first half of the 1950s, immediately following his move to a new studio down the street from MoMA where he painted some of his most revolutionary explorations of color. Blue Over Red was acquired directly from the artist in 1957 by legendary dealer and collector Harold Diamond, and subsequently spent decades with Baltimore collectors Israel and Selma Rosen, who offered the work at auction in 2005, when it sold for $5.6 million. It has remained in the same private collection since 2007. Separate release available

CLYFFORD STILL’S PH-399A quintessential masterwork of Abstract Expressionism, Clyfford Still’s PH-399 demonstrates the radical innovation of Still’s visionary oeuvre (estimate $12/18 million). Painted in 1946 – the same year as the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York – the present work is a seminal early touchstone of Still’s practice. PH-399 marks not only the realization of Still’s signature style, but also the true inauguration of Abstract Expressionism – over the course of 1946, Mark Rothko would receive his first solo museum exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Jackson Pollock’s paintings would appear in the Whitney Museum’s Annual Exhibition in New York for the first time, and art critic Robert Coates would formally coin the term ‘Abstract Expressionism’ in The New Yorker as a means of describing the new movement that would, over the next several years, emerge as the predominant artistic mode of the New York school and larger art world.

In further testament to the significance of the present work, PH-399 was selected by Still himself for inclusion in his seminal 1959 exhibition Paintings by Clyfford Still, organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. Personally curated by the artist, this exhibition was Still’s first large-scale survey, and remains among the most important exhibitions of his career. When asked to pose for a photograph within the exhibition, Still chose to stand before PH-399, cementing its status as a singularly iconic representation not only of his own celebrated output, but within the mythic narrative and development of postwar painting.

BRICE MARDEN’S MULTI-PANEL MONOCHROME PAINTINGSMeasuring nine feet across, Number Two is a monumental ode to Brice Marden’s most advanced explorations of form and color (estimate $10/15 million). The work belongs to a limited and pivotal body of the artist’s multi-panel monochrome paintings – so called because the arrangement of their composite panels echoes that of a post- and-lintel system of architecture, first devised by the ancient Greeks. Number Two is further distinguished as part of a suite of just four twelve-part post-and-lintel construction paintings executed between 1983 and 1984, which were first exhibited together in a critically acclaimed exhibition at the Pace Gallery in 1984. The present example has remained in the same private collection since it was acquired from Pace in 1985, and its sister painting – Number One – resides in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Defined by a compositional complexity and ambition of scale unprecedented in Marden’s output up to that date, these paintings remain amongst the most visually compelling and conceptually ambitious of Marden’s entire body of work.

DAVID HOCKNEYAn exquisite and intimate rendering of one of the figures closest to David Hockney during his time spent in Paris walking over the Pont des Arts to the Louvre Museum on a rainy afternoon, David Hockney’s Yves-Marie in the Rain from 1973 brilliantly captures the remarkable specificity and profound psychological depth that the artist brings to his very best portraits (estimate $8/12 million). Articulated with a clean, economical use of detail, Yves-Marie in the Rain exemplifies Hockney’s inimitable ability to suffuse his paintings with an intangible sense of atmospheric place, surpassing the formal qualities of the painting itself.

Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool from 1964 is the very first painting from David Hockney’s iconic corpus of pools (estimate $6/8 million). Featured in the artist’s best-known paintings, drawings, and photographs, the sun-dappled cerulean pool has become the defining motif of Hockney’s inimitable oeuvre. Upon Hockney’s return to England near Christmas in 1964 – shortly following his first visit to California –  he painted Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool from a drawing he had executed earlier that year, fixing upon the canvas the incandescent light and bold color of California with an almost religious reverence.

KERRY JAMES MARSHALLThe autumn auction features two works by Kerry James Marshall. Executed in 2014, Marshall’s Vignette 19 belongs to the artist’s celebrated series of Vignette paintings he began in 2003 (estimate $6.5/7.5 million). A dream-like love saga, Vignette 19 explores and celebrates the exceptional romance of three black couples – demonstrating the glaring absence of black figures from the history of Western painting in the process. Marshall rewrites art history in the present work, inserting black figures into a lush scene reminiscent of early Romantic and classical Rococo painting.

An exceptional example of Marshall’s acclaimed series of Pin-Up portraits, Small Pin-Up (Lens Flare) from 2013 is a resounding testament to the poise and intellect of his celebrated oeuvre (estimate $2.5/3.5 million). The subject of the present work invokes the glossy curves of a magazine cover girl and, simultaneously, the refined elegance of a grand art historical portrait.

FRANCIS BACON’S POPEFrancis Bacon’s Pope will be offered on behalf of the Brooklyn Museum, sold to support the museum collection (estimate $6/8 million). Executed during a particularly turbulent and emotional moment of Bacon’s life, Pope offers a rare glimpse into the psychology of the artist and the influences behind the works he created during a passionate yet volatile love affair with Peter Lacy. In the mid-1950s, Lacy moved to Tangier, prompting Bacon to make frequent and extended trips to Morocco to spend time with his lover. Despite this, their romance ultimately devolved into violence, which characterized a period of great psychological angst for the artist.

While Bacon was particularly prolific during his stints in Morocco, he ultimately destroyed the majority of the paintings he created in Tangier – perhaps as a way to separate himself from the memory of his calamitous relationship with Lacy. The present Pope is one of only six Tangier Paintings that survive, five of which Bacon gifted to his friend Nicolas Brusilowski in 1959, hoping that he may be able to reuse the canvases. Brusilowski instead preserved these works, which later made their way into notable private collections worldwide. Brusilowski sold the present Pope to legendary Swiss dealer Jan Krugier, and the work was subsequently acquired from his Galerie Krugier et cie in Geneva by pioneering businesswoman and American collector Olga H. Knoepke in 1967. She gifted the work during her lifetime to the Brooklyn Museum in 1981, where it has resided until the present day. Separate release available

A RARE CAKE COUNTER BY WAYNE THIEBAUD

Emerging from a golden childhood memory, Wayne Thiebaud’s marvelously-colored desserts arranged in a classic diner or cafeteria-style display is a motif he famously devised in 1961 – and one he revisited over the course of nearly seven decades. These carefree objects and hallmarks of middle-class consumption evoke a sense of 1960s exuberance and prosperity. The Evening Auction will offer Thiebaud’s Encased Cakes (estimate $6/8 million) – his first cake counter to appear at auction since 1997. Measuring an impressive 72 inches tall, the work is also of exceptional scale within the artist’s oeuvre, and has remained in the same distinguished private collection since it was acquired directly from the artist in 2011, the year of its completion.

LEE KRASNER’S SUN WOMAN ISun Woman I from 1957 is one of the largest and most important paintings from Lee Krasner’s crucial Earth Green series (estimate $6/8 million). Executed at a critical intersection of the artist’s life, the series represents a literal and metaphorical rebirth: painted in the year following Pollock’s death in a car crash, the Earth Green works were the first works executed in Pollock’s studio in the barn beside the house in East Hampton. Suddenly given the opportunity to work on a grand scale, the works represent Krasner’s rebirth as an artist and her declaration of independence. Widely considered as the pivotal moment of her career, Sun Woman I can be read as a refutation of Pollock’s myth and the prevailing machismo of the age.

Hugely popular during Krasner’s own lifetime, the present work was included in the artist’s pivotal 1983-85 travelling retrospective and featured on the front cover of the catalogue her solo presentation at Robert Miller in 1982.

JULIE MEHRETU’S RISE OF THE NEW SUPREMATISTSJulie Mehretu’s monumental masterpiece Rise of the New Suprematists from 2001 is a provocative synthesis of abstract hieroglyphic symbolism and architectural visual vocabulary (estimate $3.5/4.5 million). The subject of a major retrospective co-organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art that opens November 2019, Mehretu has garnered widespread acclaim as one of the most influential artists of her generation. Testifying to the caliber of the present work in particular, Rise of the New Suprematists was one of two paintings by the artist included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial – the other, Empirical Construction, Istanbul (2003), is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The gravitas of Mehretu’s conceptual ideology, coupled with the skill and dexterity of her mark-making, have established her as a modern master and uniquely articulate voice of a socially, culturally, and politically wary generation.

EARLY WORKS BY JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIATTwo pivotal, early works executed by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1981 will highlight the auction, each estimated to achieve $2.5/3.5 million. Emerging from the collection of legendary art critic and style icon Glenn O’Brien, Famous Negro Athletes serves as a testament to the creative partnership between O’Brien and the artist. A key advocate for Basquiat in his early years, O’Brien was among the first to recognize the young graffiti artist’s virtuosic formal abilities, and would go on to become a close friend of the artist over the course of the 1980s. Executed on paper by Basquiat in 1981 as a gift for O’Brien and remaining in his collection ever since, the inscrutable faces of Famous Negro Athletes powerfully scrutinize a society which offers so few professions for marginalized groups to excel.

Brown Eggs is a definitive example of the artist’s most iconic motif, the fierce skull that dominates many of his best-known masterworks. Part self-portrait and part racial allegory, Basquiat’s heads fuse a new style of expressionistic portraiture with a charged, underlying current of socio-political symbolism. Despite his young age, the present work displays Basquiat’s mature aesthetic vocabulary, signature figuration, mastery of color and unparalleled intensity of mark-making that would come to define his output.