NEW YORK, NY.- On Tuesday, November 11 at 11am,
Doyle New York will hold an auction of Post-War & Contemporary Art. The sale will feature works by European, American, Latin American and Asian artists comprising artistic movements from Abstract Expressionism through 21st century Contemporary works and Street Art.
Highlighting the sale is a 1965 oil on paper by Willem de Kooning (Dutch/American, 1904-1997) from the Estate of the Honorable Roy M. Goodman (est. $200,000-400,000). Willem de Kooning created many small works in charcoal, oil, and pastel as he developed his ideas for larger paintings. When he painted these preliminary compositions in oil, he often worked on newsprint, as the paper slowed the drying time of his pigments. The work in the auction, titled Woman, is dated 1965. It marks the artist's return to this theme after a decade of creating abstractions. Though all of his work can be said to represent either figures or landscapes, the subject of women is one clearly distinguished from his other themes, and he continued to return to this imagery throughout his career. The work was acquired directly from the artist in 1965 by New York State Senator Roy M. Goodman, who, for over forty years, was a dedicated advocate for the arts in New York and the nation.
By Christopher Wool (American, b. 1955) is a neo-expressionist painting consisting of gestural loops executed in enamel on aluminum (est. $150,000-250,000). Dated 1984, it is a key experiment in Wool’s then-burgeoning career. Created roughly around the time of his first solo show at the Cable Gallery in New York, the work shows early usage of smudging his line, something he would continue and expand upon over the next decades. The work also employs enamel paint and aluminum, a medium and support used continuously throughout his oeuvre, which gives this work, and many that proceed it, a flat, reflective nature. In the context of Wool's landmark 2013 Guggenheim retrospective, this abstract work can be seen as a key to what was to come. Showing no painting pre-1987, the abstract works in the Guggenheim exhibit repeat this inky swirl, many times larger, across massive white aluminum slabs, embracing the smudges and smears, their scale and volume equally as imposing as his cherished word paintings. The work was gifted in 1985 by the artist to the current owner.
Martin Wong (American, 1946-1999) is represented by a powerful 1989 large-scale tondo titled Liberty Mourning the Death of Her Sister – Beijing (est. $20,000-40,000). A Chinese-American artist living in NYC's Lower East Side, Martin Wong famously championed the pre-gentrified landscape of his decaying neighborhood, as well as the heroes of his heritage. This work, created for inclusion in the Asian American Arts Centre's group show, CHINA: June 4, 1989 An Art Exhibition, was his sobering reaction to the Tiananmen Square massacre that had become an international incident just a few months prior. To the cheering of 100,000 onlookers, student protestors wheeled a 33-foot high papier-mache sculpture they dubbed "Lady Liberty," their embodiment of the Statue of Liberty. In Martin Wong's work, the Statue of Liberty collapses in sorrow, reacting to the existential death of the protestors' Lady Liberty, and in kind, the death of their hopes for democracy, freedom of speech and much more.
The sale also features works by Sayed Haider Raza, Alexander Calder, Zoran Antonio Music, Hans Hofmann, Wolf Kahn, Angel Botello, Jimmy Ernst, Tom Wesselman, Tony Oursler, Keith Haring, Larry Rivers, Crash, Arman, Art & Language and Anselm Reyle.
The public is invited to the exhibition on view at Doyle New York from November 7 through 10.
