Elaine de Kooning - Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session New York Wednesday, May 15, 2024 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Nestled amongst dynamic brushstrokes of vibrant colors, a bull rendered in rich greens and blues sits firmly in the center of the composition. Depicting either the moment immediately before or right after a bullfight, when the bull is idle, Elaine de Kooning’s Untitled (Bullfight Series), 1961, captures the chaotic and short-tempered energy of the animal through quick, gestural brushstrokes. Bursting with action, the present work was created following the artist’s move from crowded New York City to the open expanses of New Mexico in 1957, the same year that she separated from fellow artist, Willem de Kooning. This move and period would greatly inspire de Kooning’s artistic production, allowing her to experiment with new imagery and colors. As noted by the artist on her time spent in the American Southwest, “I went to Juárez to see the bullfights, which immediately struck me as a heightened image of Southwestern landscape – the panorama of the arena, the heraldic colors…”i

     

    Acquired directly from the artist circa 1961–1962 by collector I. David Orr, who was notably a close friend of artists like Franz Kline, the present example of de Kooning’s groundbreaking Bullfight paintings—which many call the most successful of her career—is entirely fresh to market, residing in the same private collection since its acquisition. The work has not been exhibited publicly since 1970, when it was included in the landmark exhibition Contemporary Women Artists hosted by Skidmore College, alongside icons such as Barbara Hepworth, Grace Hartigan, Lee Bontecou, Lee Krasner, and more. Other examples from de Kooning’s Bullfight series are housed in esteemed public collections like those of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Denver Art Museum.

     

    Sketch gifted by the artist to I. David Orr, circa 1961–1962, on the back of a book page.

    “I’ve made a great many pastels of bullfights and have begun to make paintings – terrific subject. The fights themselves I find tragic. I’ve met some bullfighters, very small, slight men who are fantastically brave – really, but I still love the bulls – glorious animals, very surprisingly delicate leges and ankles and I’ve never seen such an image of speed.”
    —Elaine de Kooning in a letter to I. David Orr, dated 1958

    Taking a job as a visiting professor at the University of New Mexico in 1957 and living right along the Mexican border, de Kooning would take frequent trips to Ciudad Juárez, watching bullfights almost every weekend. These events would inspire a series of bulls rendered in a variety of media, which represent a turning point for the artist in her life and career. In her depictions of bulls, de Kooning allows the animal to take center stage, abstracting all other indicators of its surroundings in favor of vibrant gestures and colors, which clue the viewer to the momentum and energy of the moment in time. As Lawrence Campbell stated of de Kooning’s revelatory works of the late 1950s and early 1960s, “For others, the bull, the center of the conflict, would be the image of darkness overcome by the forces of light. For [de Kooning], the bull is the hero. And sometimes the bull does win and need never burst, with tiny-ankled feet, into the arena again."ii
     

    Elaine de Kooning, June 1959, inscribed "to David with love, Elaine".

    Abandoning the muted hues which characterized her previous portraits, in the bull paintings, de Kooning was undoubtedly inspired by the Southwestern landscape to introduce a warm and fresh color palette. The present work adopts bright and vibrant shades of red, orange, and yellow mingled with deep blues and greens, illustrating both a departure and an elevation of her art from the decade prior. Urgent and confident in her use of line and color, de Kooning exudes an almost pent-up energy in her applied brushstrokes, mirroring the energy of the bulls and surrounding crowd during the fights. Exploring the interplays between action painting and figuration in Untitled (Bullfight Series), this time in the Southwest, was a preoccupation which persisted throughout her whole career. Proving the importance of the subject to de Kooning, the artist would later return to the bull motif in the last decade of her life following a visit to Lascaux, France.

                           

    Avid art collector, I. David Orr amassed a collection which combined the best of mid-century American art. Beginning to collect around 1929, Orr acquired examples by artists of the Hudson River School, native Impressionists, the Ashcan school, and a smaller group of contemporary artists, such as Franz Kline and Elaine de Kooning. Noting, “I like anything that’s beautiful and that was successfully rendered by the artist,” Orr concentrated more on quality than quantity, selecting works based on the beauty of the work itself rather than the notoriety of the artist who created it.iii Indeed, the present work demonstrates this collecting aim, presenting an example of one of de Kooning’s most successful series.

     

    i Elaine de Kooning, quoted in Eleanor Munro, Originals: American Women Artists, New York, 1979, p. 255.

    ii Lawrence Campbell, ”Elaine de Kooning Paints a Picture,” ARTnews, no. 59, vol. 8, December 1960, p. 40.

    iii I. David Orr, quoted in Helen A. Harrison, “The Art of Collecting,” The New York Times, May 9, 1982, p. 1.

    • Condition Report

    • Description

      View our Conditions of Sale.

    • Provenance

      I. David Orr (acquired directly from the artist circa 1961–1962)
      Thence by descent to the present owner

    • Exhibited

      Saratoga Springs, Hathorn Gallery, Skidmore College; New York, National Arts Club, Contemporary Women Artists, January 6–29, 1970, no. 18

Property from the Collection of I. David Orr

108

Untitled (Bullfight Series)

signed with the artist's initials "E. de K." lower right
oil on Masonite
18 1/8 x 23 7/8 in. (46 x 60.6 cm)
Painted in 1961.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$150,000 - 200,000 

Place Advance Bid
Contact Specialist

Annie Dolan
NY Head of Auctions and Specialist, Head of Sale, Morning Session
212 940 1288
adolan@phillips.com

Modern & Contemporary Art Day Sale, Morning Session

New York Auction 15 May 2024