Guston’s Red Sky from 1978 is highlighted by its notable exhibition history, having been included in the artist’s seminal retrospective in 2003, which travelled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth (estimate $6/8 million). Impressive in scale and impact, this powerful painting encapsulates many of the themes from the final years of the artist’s oeuvre. Guston’s venture back into figuration in the 1970s afforded him a newfound visual vocabulary, which he used to more accurately convey his attitude toward the social and political atmosphere at the time. In Red Sky, Guston references the student riots which took place during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  This grave historical event was marked by excessive police brutality which unfolded before an international audience.

Painted in a lush tones of blue, gray and pink and exhibited in Guston’s mid-career retrospective in 1964 organized by Sam Hunter for the Guggenheim Museum, Outdoors (estimate $1/1.5 million) is the most significant of the 1960s abstractions to come to auction, and together with his Untitled painting, depicting two “hooded figures”, round out this exceptional group (estimate $250/350,000).

Untitled X from 1975 encapsulates the full force of Willem de Kooning’s abstract vernacular - through each visceral swath, smear, drip and blow, the artist here asserts his total mastery of this medium (estimate $8/12 million). Executed in the year that de Kooning sensationally immersed himself in painting, this work belongs to an outpouring of creativity that produced an illustrious group of large-scale, color-saturated canvases that rank among the finest achievements of his career. Of this group - all produced in just six months - the present work is exceptional for the sheer force of its painterly conviction, the variety of its luscious brushstrokes, emphatic mark-making and violent flecks of paint, all conveyed in a breathtaking palette of navy, cream, lavender, and maroon.

Francis Bacon depicted his lover and muse George Dyer in more than 40 paintings, with as many created following his death as executed during his lifetime. Within that canon, Study for Portrait is distinguished as the very last painting of Dyer that Bacon ever executed (estimate $12/18 million). Monumental in its scale, and both seductive as well as somber, the present work encompasses the full range of their thrilling and intense relationship: at once vulnerable, brooding, romantic, heroic and tortured, the portrait reveals a multifaceted, tempestuous, and passionate love affair, as well as an artistic genius grappling with a highly charged and expressive artistic vocabulary.

A relentless self-editor, Bacon not only destroyed many of his paintings, but he also reworked and continually altered what had originally been dubbed ‘completed’, and Study for Portrait is notable as one of the most drastically reworked paintings that Bacon ultimately kept.

Works by British artist Frank Auerbach will also highlight our Contemporary Art auctions this May, including two important portraits painted at the height of his artistic powers, Head of Julia (pictured right, estimate $600/800,000) and Head of Catherine Lampert (estimate $350/450,000). A familiarity and understanding of his sitter’s psyche are a pivotal part of Auerbach’s oeuvre, which revolved around an attempt to whittle a small group of sitters in order to create works that speak to the artist’s own personality along with his subjects and executed both works with dense layered brushstrokes built over time to reveal dazzling color within each layer.  Exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in the artist’s 2001 retrospective, Head of Julia depicts a portrait of the artist’s wife, Julia Wolstenhome. Executed with directness in the way Auerbach paints her, the work epitomizes his own unique aesthetic, while also illustrating the influence of American Expressionism on his work. Head of Catherine Lampert is a portrait of the artist’s old friend, key spokesperson and reviewer, resulting in a work with intense familiarity between artist and subject.

IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART
May 2019
Max Beckmann’s Liegender Akt In Starker Verkürzung (Reclining Nude Sharply Foreshortened) exemplifies the bold psychological portraits the artist executed in the last decade of his career (estimate $3/5 million). Having endured years of war and occupation in exile from his native Germany, the danger and confinement he experienced during World War II gave rise to one of the artist’s greatest periods of invention. Following his immigration to the United States, Beckmann’s work conjured a newly-found sense of liberation and autonomy, while retaining the sheer exuberance of his commanding imagery and bravura technique that set him apart as a contemporary visionary. His mature works mark a combination of everyday reality which makes palpable an assumed strangeness and fantasy, evident in the present work.

In addition, the Impressionist Day Sale will be highlighted by a superb group of works on paper, led by Gino Severini’s Sino Titilo, and sculptures by Jean Arp, Henri Laurens, Jacques Lipchitz and Henry Moore which reflect Gerald Lennard’s deep love of all medium and strong forms.