Robert Indiana, "NUMBERS ONE through ZERO," 1978-2003. Estimate: $700,000 - $1,000,000
Auction on 24 April to Include Works by Modern, Post-War, and Contemporary Masters
NEW YORK – On the heels of its most succesful ever Editions sale in London, Phillips is proud to announce the department’s 10th anniversary auction on 24 April in New York. The Editions team was founded at Phillips in 2008 by Cary Leibowitz and Kelly Troester, who both remain at the helm today. In the 10 years since its inception, Phillips’ team has elevated the status of Editions as an artistically significant, often experimental and endlessly fascinating collecting category. The auction on 24 April will offer works by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Brice Marden, Peter Doig, David Hockney, Jackson Pollock, Sam Gilliam, Keith Haring, Joseph Beuys, and Vija Celmins, among others.
“In the past decade, we have seen tremendous growth in the market for prints and multiples,” said Cary Leibowitz and Kelly Troester, Worldwide Co-Heads of Editions. “Phillips has prided itself on offering fine art original editions, which are many times the direct result of collaboration between artists and their printmakers, to both aspiring collectors and connoisseurs of 20th Century and Contemporary Art. Our 10-year anniversaryauction continues this tradition, offering over 400 lots that span nearly 90 years of this important collecting category.”
Philips is pleased to offer, within the auction’s strong modern art section, works by Joan Miró, Marino Marini and Jean Dubuffet as well as a wide selection of more than 15 examples of Pablo Picasso’s masterful work in ceramic earthenware from the famous Madoura pottery studio in Vallauris, France. This group of Picasso’s ceramic works is crowned by 1953’s massive and monumental Gros oiseau corrida (Large Corrida Bird), an edition of only 25 that towers above 30 inches tall. Visage larvé (Hidden Face), 1956-57, is a rare example of Picasso’s work in sterling silver, which was inspired by the artist’s remark to the legendary art historian Douglas Cooper about how thrilling it would be to see his ceramic works rendered in the precious metal. The most emblematic examples of Picasso’s oeuvre can be seen in the sale’s graphics. For example, Jacqueline Reading (Jacqueline lisant), 1962, exemplifies the artist’s innovative work in linocut as well as his fruitful collaboration with Jacqueline, one of the artist’s great loves.
Innovative works by the most sought-after Post-War, American artists feature in both the Evening and Day sale sessions, including the complete set of Robert Indiana’s NUMBERS ONE through ZERO , 1978-2003. In a small edition of 8, this work is among the most coveted sculptural multiples, with each piece in this version standing 18 inches tall. From 1965’s iconic 11 Pop Artists Volume II portfolio, Reverie, 1965, by Roy Lichtenstein is one of the finest trophies of Post-War printmaking and a star of the Evening session. It is joined by other fine examples by the artist such as Reflections on Crash, 1996, Tel Aviv Museum Print, 1989, andSunshine Through the Clouds, 1985, amongst a number of others. Such seminal pieces of Pop Art history are joined by the most iconic face of them all in Andy Warhol’s Marilyn of 1967.
Several works by female artists also feature strongly in this season’s Editions sale. Helen Frankenthaler’s Tale of Genji III, 1998, is the artist’s late-period, printmaking masterpiece — in which she made use of over 18 woodcut blocks and 53 colors — that recalls her most renowned paintings on canvas. The auction will include innovative works by Niki de Saint Phalle, Kara Walker, Jo Baer, Louise Bourgeois, Elizabeth Peyton, Susan Rothenberg and Cindy Sherman amongst others.
Other Contemporary highlights include a collection of works by Brice Marden. Brice Marden began printmaking in the early 1960s and has been a force upon the medium ever since. Phillips is delighted to offer over 20 lots from the artist, including both individual works and large sets, which span across four decades of Marden’s long and introspective career. Dating from his time as a student at Yale, to sailing trips through the Greek Isles during the 1970s, and finally to more recent times with his study of Eastern calligraphy, these works trace the artist’s development into a contemporary master. Etchings to Rexroth, 1986, a prolific portfolio of etchings, illustrates some of Brice Marden’s most profound artistic triumphs and provides a rare and comprehensive look at its artist’s pensive, inner landscape. In the exhibition leading up to the sale, Marden’s works will be exhibited alongside the work of Josef Albers, presenting an interesting dichotomy, as it was Albers’ influential color theory that Brice Marden rebelled against.
Peter Doig’s painterly set of twelve etchings from 2013 (illustrated below, left) encapsulates many of the various developments seen across the artist’s fruitful career. David Hockney’s Moving Focus image similarly deploys tropes that anchored the British artist’s decades-long art making. Reminiscent of Hockney’s early portraits, Walking Past Two Chairs, 1984-86 combines the informality of his Friends series together with the studies of perspective and landscape that are hallmark of his later career.
Auction: Tuesday, 24 April 2018, 2pm and 6pm EDT
Auction viewing: 14-24 April 2018
Location: 450 Park Avenue
