NEW YORK, NY.- This November, Christie’s will present an unrivalled selection of paintings and sculpture by some of the titans of twentieth century art. From Andy Warhol’s opulent Four Marilyns to Cy Twombly’s sublime Untitled, and Louise Bourgeois’ monumental Spider to Lucian Freud’s magnificent portrait The Brigadier –the very best examples of Pop, Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism and Conceptual Art are represented. The role of the collector is also honored, with a selection of Pop works from the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Collection, works of Arte Povera from the Collection of Ileana Sonnabend and the Estate of Nina Sundell, and an impressive grouping of works by Alexander Calder from the Arthur and Anita Kahn Collection. With 70 lots, the evening sale of Post-War and Contemporary art is expected to exceed $350 million. The Artist’s Muse presents a curated selection of extraordinary works which celebrates the subjects and sitters who inspired the greatest artists of our time. From the female figure to the energy of the modern city, the muse has taken many forms. Here iconic paintings such as Roy Lichtenstein’s Nurse, Andy Warhol’s Gun, presented alongside works by Jeff Koons and Christopher Wool, all of whom have used their own unique muses to shape the direction of modern art. With the 14 lots from this category offered in the Artist’s Muse evening sale, and the 400 lots in the morning and afternoon sales, the Post-War & Contemporary Art category is expected to exceed $575 million.

COLLECTIONS
THE MEZZACAPPA COLLECTION
Christie’s New York will pay tribute to the eyes of a modern Renaissance man, the distinguished connoisseur and patron Damon Mezzacappa who assembled a major collection of abstract and figurative works. The highlight of the collection, Lucian Freud’s majestic The Brigadier, painted between 2003-2004, is an important portrait of Andrew-Parker Bowles, and one of Lucian Freud’s most imposing and powerful portraits. Recently included in the highly acclaimed 2012 retrospective of the artist’s work organized by the National Portrait Gallery in London. The Mezzacappa Collection also includes important works by Jasper Johns and Joan Mitchell.

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF PAUL MAENZ, BERLIN
Three works by Carl Andre, Sol Lewitt, and Dan Flavin from The Collection of Paul Maenz will be sold in the evening sale of Post-War and Contemporary art. Throughout his gallery and the artist’s he represented, Paul Maenz had a profound impact on Cologne’s importance as a cultural and artistic center. Specialized in works by conceptual artists, the Galerie Paul Maenz Köln was instrumental in introducing avant-garde art of the 1970s and 1980s to Europe and North America. New York and Cologne have had a decisive influence on the art world, both cities afford the kind of climate that artists value and possess intuitions that both challenge and support the art scene. An important stack by Donald Judd from the collection will be sold in May 2016.

PROPERTY FROM SONY CORPORATION OF AMERICA
Night Birds is a powerful painting that was produced during a seminal period in Lee Krasner’s career. Painted in 1962 when she had finally emerged from the influence of Jackson Pollock—her partner in life and art for fourteen years—and had begun to truly find her own artistic voice. Part of her celebrated Umber series, other works from this period are housed in major museum collections, such as Night Birds’ sister painting, Cobalt Night, which is in the collection of National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. This work, estimated $2,500,000 - 3,500,000 could break the world auction record for the artist of $3.1 million. Vertical a work by the Adolph Gottlieb (Estimate: $500,000 - 700,000) also coming from Sony Corporation of America will be sold in the Day sale, on November 11th.

THE ARTHUR AND ANITA KAHN COLLECTION
During a lifetime of collecting, ‘the Rodin of the dental world’ Arthur and his wife Anita Kahn assembled one of the most remarkable collections of post-war American art. The Kahns assembled one of the most complete groups of Calder’s work in private hands. The scope and size of the Kahn’s collection is unparalleled. The examples of Calder’s iconic large-scale hanging mobiles, the delicate pieces of his exquisite jewellery, and his many works on paper are outstanding. Both Anita and Dr. Kahn followed the artist’s career closely and were rewarded with a level of access that allowed them to acquire some signature pieces that would become central to their whole collection. Alongside the pieces by Calder, works such as Richard Pousette-Dart’s crowning glory, Blood Wedding capture the energy and excitement of post-war America.

THE MILES AND SHIRLEY FITERMAN COLLECTION
From Minnesota to Palm Beach, New York, and beyond, Miles and Shirley Fiterman Fitermans held a lifelong and deeply shared affinity for fine art, encompassing the work of such influential figures as Calder, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Miró and Warhol. The Fitermans’ collection was built on scholarship, visual delight, and the ineffable connection between artist and patron. Twelve works, estimated in the region of $70 million, will be offered in November between the three evening sales of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Impressionist and Modern Art and The Artist's Muse: A Curated Evening Sale of 20th Century Art.

WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION OF ILEANA SONNABEND AND NINA CASTELLI SUNDELL
Ileana Sonnabend, one of the most influential figures in the twentieth century artistic canon, indubitably steered the trajectory of Post-War art in the United States and Europe. The visionary gallerist, patron, and collector, described by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith as “the last in a line of important European-born American art dealers,” facilitated a vibrant cross-continental dialogue via her influential New York and Paris galleries. Known in some circles as the “mom of Pop,” Sonnabend brought American Pop Art—in the form of then-unknown work by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Roy Lichtenstein—as well as Minimalism to Europe, and conversely brought Italian Arte Povera—by a group of young up-and-comers including Jannis Kounellis, Giovanni Anselmo, and Michelangelo Pistoletto—and Italian NeoExpressionism to the United States.

SCULPTURES
A giant Spider, one of Louise Bourgeois’s most enduring and iconic motifs and the largest work by the artist ever offered at auction will be on the plaza of Christie’s 20 Rockefeller for two week. Estimated between $25 million to $35 million, the mammoth bronze arachnid is expected to surpass the artist’s current record of $10.7 million, established in 2011 by Christie’s New York for a different edition of Spider, and is set to make history for the sale of a sculpture by a female artist.

An iconic Balloon Swan (Yellow), rendered in a bright, joyful yellow on a truly monumental, nearly twelve-foot scale, is an exemplary sculpture from one of today’s most important and influential artists globally, Jeff Koons. Koons characteristically takes a swan—an elegant, exalted creature, much like the beast of art history in which the bird so frequently features—and shapes it into a playful and accessible form: a universal visual delight structured by the artist’s unparalleled vision and distinctive optimistic ideology. This work is estimated $15,000,000 - 25,000,000.

Characteristically of Pop giant Claes Oldenburg’s singular oeuvre, Clothespin Ten Foot is at once amusing and elegant, light-hearted and profound and come from the Fiterman Collection. This striking example is an earlier version of Philadelphia’s favorite public sculpture, the soaring 45-foot structure which Oldenburg erected in the city in 1976.

Tanktomen VIII, from the Arthur and Anita Kahn’s Collection, bears the mark of protean postwar sculptor David Smith’s unique brand of alchemy. Assemblages of welded industrial scrap metal—including boiler parts and cylindrical steel tank parts—metamorphose into an exquisite form. Erect, vertical, and hieratic, Tanktotem VIII is sustained by a tensile sophistication: a graceful rigor or stark delicacy.

THE ARTIST’S MUSE
Roy Lichtenstein’s Nurse is a dazzling celebration of the bold new imagery that uniquely defined Roy Lichtenstein. The subject of this painting stands alongside the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy as one of a distinguished group of female icons who came to define this radical new movement. The subject of Nurse is a quintessential Lichtenstein heroine.

Hand on Breast is a key work in Jeff Koons’s Made in Heaven series, which has been regarded by one curator as “his most important body of work—the most radical, the most risky, the most sincere.” This work features the superstar artist entwined with then-wife and popular Italian adult-film star and parliamentarian Ilona Staller on a pink satin bed surrounded by gossamer butterflies

Painted in 1952-53, Woman is a rare painting from Willem de Kooning’s eponymous series, made at the pinnacle of the artist’s career and which became one of the major milestones in art history. This acclaimed body of work (of which the present painting is one of a small number of examples to remain in private hands) broke down the boundaries between abstraction and figuration with its radical representation of the female figure.

Gun unites two of the obsessions that characterize Pop legend Andy Warhol’s oeuvre: Americana and death. In this silkscreened rendering of a handgun’s slick form, mass consumption, mechanical reproduction, and violence elegantly intermingle. The painting belongs to a series depicting firearms that was produced by Warhol from 1981 to 1983, at a time when the artist’s critical success reached even more immense heights.