NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s First Open Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art will start the 2015 auction season with an exciting selection of approximately 350 lots, which represent the full spectrum of Post War and Contemporary Art. The sale will present works by an array of artists featured in the recent November auctions, but with price points that are accessible to a wide range of collectors. A great choice of works by blue chip artists such as Jean Dubuffet, Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ed Ruscha, as well as sought-after contemporary artists including Theaster Gates, Thomas Houseago, Parker Ito, Rashid Johnson, Oscar Murillo, David Ostrowski, Seth Price, Christian Rosa, Sterling Ruby, Analia Saban, and Kelley Walker. The sale will begin with Works from the Collection of Ruth Horwich, featuring an extensive collection of jewelry by Alexander Calder and works by John Chamberlain, Llyn Foulkes, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, and Andy Warhol amongst others.

First Open will give both new and seasoned buyers an opportunity to diversify their collections and to follow in the footsteps of individuals whose extraordinary eye for quality anticipated many artists’ rise to fame. Estimates vary from $8,000 up to $750,000. The sale is the perfect opportunity to discover emerging artists and explore lesser-known works by established artists. All works will be exhibited before the auction at Christie’s Rockefeller Center Galleries from February 28th to March 3rd.

“As the first auction of Post-War and Contemporary Art in New York of the year, we are particularly thrilled to be offering a great number of works this season – ranging from the 1940s to present day by artists from various regions,” declared Ed Tang, Specialist, Head of First Open Sale, Post-War & Contemporary Art.

Leading the sale is Andy Warhol’s Triple Dollar Sign, estimated $750,000-950,000. The Dollar Signs are among the most Warholian of the artist’s images. The series seamlessly synthesizes Warhol’s brilliant understanding of commerce and of art as a commodity with his expert graphic skills—including his draftsmanship and intense Pop palette. Andy Warhol’s long-term obsession with money is well-documented, from his much-quoted philosophy that “…making money is art and working is art and being good in business is the best art,” (A. Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975, p. 92) to his detailed diary entries of the cost of each and every cab ride. His fascination with the dollar, and all it symbolized, reached its apogee with his Dollar Sign series, begun in 1981. The source for those dollar drawings was a photograph taken by Edward Wallowich, who also provided the photography for the Campbell’s Soup Cans and the Coca-Cola bottles I’d Rather Die belongs to one of Richard Prince’s most iconic series, the Joke paintings. The radical appropriation of the joke series echoes Warhol’s Campbell Soup Can paintings and the monochrome jokes are archetypical of Richard Prince’s creation as they define the dry, dead-pan aesthetic of the artist.

With an estimate of $250,000-350,000, Mustangs is a superb photographic print of a painting that Gerhard Richter completed in 1964, titled Mustang Squadron. This specific model of plane would have held significance political resonance for Richter, as Mustang was deployed in the British assault on Dresden in 1945 an event that Richter, a boy of thirteen, witnessed from afar as a faint glow in the night sky.

The cover work, Infinity Nets TWGZ, executed in 2005 (estimate: $350,000-450,000) is a quintessential example of the Japanese-American artist Yayoi Kusama’s acclaimed Infinity Nets series that she began in the 1950s. She has described her nets as visualization of powerful hallucinations she has endured since childwood, 'My net paintings were... without composition without beginning, end or centre. The entire canvas would be occupied by monochromatic nets... You might say that I came under the spell of repetition and aggregation. My nets grew beyond myself and beyond the canvases I was covering with them. They began to cover walls, the ceiling, and finally the whole universe. I was always standing at the centre of the obsession, over the passionate accretion and repetition inside of me.'

WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF RUTH HORWICH
As great collectors and beloved patrons of many Chicago art institutions, Ruth and Leonard Horwich assembled one of the finest collections of art in Chicago, legendary for its “forest of Calders” and for its extraordinary diversity and deeply personal character. Several works of art from the collection, including an extensive collection of Calder jewelry will be offered at auction.

Although well known for his iconic mobiles and monumental outdoor sculptures, Alexander Calder also possessed an exceptional talent for working on a more intimate scale to produce exquisite pieces of jewelry. Each piece was individually designed and hand-made by the artist, displaying the artist’s signature working practice and the same sense of artistic formality and grace that is present in his larger-scaled works. These examples from the collection of Ruth Horwich display Calder’s incredible dexterity in the necklace, bracelet and brooch form, each containing a tightly wound coil of lustrous metal – which was a constant theme that ran throughout his jewelry practice. In Spiral Pin, a flat ribbon of gold wraps in on itself until it seemingly disappears in the center of an ever-coiling circle (estimate: $50,000-70,000). In Bracelet, Calder constructs a series of brass tendrils that extend up the wrist, snuggly gripping the forearm (estimate: $60,000-80,000). In Necklace, Calder arranges a cascade of miniature coils on a piece of leather chord to shimmering wave of golden hues that sways with a sense of excited animation (estimate: $100,000-150,000). Several works including Bracelet were first shown in a legendary exhibition of Calder’s jewelry at the Willard Gallery in New York in 1940.

In addition to her collection, Horwich was a dedicated supporter of many of Chicago’s art institutions, taking on leadership roles and donating many significant works from her collection. She served on the Twentieth-Century painting and sculpture committee at the Art Institute of Chicago and was appointed to the exhibitions committee of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago at a time when exhibition proposals were hotly debated. But perhaps her most long-standing and personally rewarding relationship was with the Hyde Park Art Center, one of the oldest alternative art spaces in Chicago. She served on their board for forty years and during her tenure was able to share her knowledge and indulge her passion for supporting and mentoring local artists such as Jim Nutt and Ed Paschke whose works will be offered during the sale.