Works Spanning the 20th - 21st Centuries
Lead Phillips’ Evening & Day Editions Sales in London
Auctions on 25 January to Include Prints & Multiples by
Donald Judd, Pablo Picasso, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol
A Group of Works Gifted by Lucian Freud to Nicola Bowery To Also Be Offered
LONDON - 4 JANUARY 2018 - Phillips opens the new year in London with Evening & Day Editions, presenting works by an array of Modern and Contemporary masters. Highlights include etchings by Lucian Freud, gifted by the artist to Nicola Bowery and her then husband Leigh Bowery, an eclectic group of Picasso ceramics from the Collection of Betty and Stanley Sheinbaum, and property from a Private Rhineland Collection including unique objects and found-art multiples by Joseph Beuys, Imi Knoebel and Blinky Palermo. With a total of over 320 lots, the Day sale will be held on 25 January at 1pm (lots 89-327), with the Evening sale following at 6pm (lots 1-88) on the same day.
Robert Kennan, Head of Editions, Europe, said, “As forerunners in the Editions space and with ten years of record-breaking sales, Phillips continues to set the standard for presenting museum-quality, original artist prints and multiples. This sale brings together works by the most significant artists of the 20th and 21st centuries from a number of important collections. Featuring Basquiat, Freud, Kusama, Matisse, Picasso, Richter and Warhol, the sale offers a great range of modern and contemporary works with accessible price points for budding collectors and seasoned connoisseurs alike.”
The Evening Sale brings together five lots that were gifts from Lucian Freud to Nicola Bowery and her then husband Leigh Bowery, the legendary performance artist and frequent sitter for Freud. The group includes four etchings; two portraits of Leigh depicted in the monumental Large Head (estimate: £25,000-35,000) and tender Reclining Figure (estimate: £8,000-12,000). Leigh also appears in the group portrait Four Figures (estimate: £10,000-15,000) with Cerith Wyn Evans and Freud’s daughter Ib holding her own daughter. The fourth etching is a rare proof impression of Freud’s portrait of Bruce Bernard (estimate: £5,000-7,000). Nicola sat for Freud for three years and in an emotive essay she recounts the sittings with great candour and humour, and recalls the time she was gifted the final lot in the present group, one of Freud's palettes (estimate: £6,000-8,000) - “One day as ‘And the Bridegroom’ was being painted, the paint palette that Lucian had been using was discarded amongst the rags, so I asked Lucian if I could have it as to me it was a piece of art in its own right.”
Further highlights include two rare sets of woodcuts by Donald Judd, Untitled, 1988 (estimate: £80,000-120,000), and Untitled, 1988-90 (estimate: £40,000-60,000). It was with ambivalence that Judd first approached the woodcut medium in 1953. The physical, messy nature of carving the wood initially caused trepidation for an artist who did not like to work with his hands or fuss with tools. Yet the woodcut medium afforded Judd a crucial moment of artistic experimentation and the present works demonstrate the unique ways in which he divided pictorial space.
The sale presents a number of works by prominent New York artists from the 1980s, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, who is currently the subject of his first large-scale exhibition in the UK at the Barbican Art Gallery. Highlights include Head, from Portfolio I, (estimate: £30,000-50,000), and Cabeza, from Portfolio II (estimate: £20,000-30,000). Other works from this era include Keith Haring’s screenprint Best Buddies, from Pop Shop I, 1987 (estimate: £7,000-9,000), and Robert Longo’s complete set of five lithographs Men in the Cities, 1990 (estimate: £20,000-30,000).
The Day Sale comprises a total of thirty-six works from the collection of an artist, who focused on a group of German artists at the forefront of Contemporary Edition making from the 1960s through the turn of the 21st century. His collecting choices centred on the work of a few key protagonists: Joseph Beuys, Imi Knoebel, and Blinky Palermo. These artists studied, lived or worked together in a constant dialogue, affording mutual influence to each other’s work. Knoebel in particular extrapolated on Beuys’ avant-garde presentation of multiples, using found objects and common construction materials such as plywood, copper piping and Masonite. Palermo equally shared an obsession with form and colour, with his prints offering distillations of his in-situ wall paintings and metal pictures. Also including unique works on paper by Suzan Frecon and Max Cole, as well as iconic colour-field prints by Ellsworth Kelly, this collection offers a window into post WWII German artistic experimentation and its pictorial legacy throughout Europe and America.
Gerhard Richter’s September is a leading lot of the Evening Sale (estimate: £80,000-120,000). Richter presents the viewer with an intimately scaled, almost obscured image that slowly unfurls before the viewer. Taken from the 2005 painting of the same title, Richter’s print, sandwiched between planes of glass, presents a crucial moment of the attack on September 11th, 2001. September assembles the multitude of mass media images from the viewer’s visual archive, with the glass plates recalling the digital mediums through which the world collectively witnessed this event.
Works from the Collection of Betty and Stanley Sheinbaum include a vibrant group of Picasso ceramics. It is often said that Picasso’s works are ‘passionately autobiographical’ and nowhere is this more evident than in his body of ceramic experimentation. Surrounded by a menagerie of bids and flora in his home, and inspired by the rich lexicon of mythological imagery, these complex works use both gouging and layering alongside gloss and matt finishes to demonstrate the rich arsenal of techniques that Picasso employed to create textural variety. The group is an important reminder of Picasso’s ability to apply his talents to every medium as a true innovator, with a unique ability to capture, transform and project his interior vision alongside the observed world.
Paula Rego is fundamentally a storyteller, and her love of children’s stories has particularly influenced her graphic work. In series such as Nursery Rhymes, 1989 and Peter Pan, 1992, Rego explores the forbidden and confronts the bizarre, re-interpreting familiar texts with an inventive and subversive eye. The Day Sale comprises an iconic group of etchings and lithographs by Rego, including Peter Pan, Jane Eyre, and Three Blind Mice (estimate: £1,500-2,000). Rego explained: “I turn to etching, and lithography, with a sense of exuberance and relief. In printmaking, you can give your imagination full-range and see the results almost immediately. So one image triggers the idea for the next one and so on.”
Further highlights include two monumental Howard Hodgkin carborundum etchings with unique hand-colouring. Created in 2009, As Time Goes By (red) and As Time Goes By (blue) are the largest prints that Hodgkin ever made (estimate: $40,000-60,000 each).
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Phillips is a leading global platform for buying and selling 20th and 21st century art and design. With dedicated expertise in the areas of 20th Century and Contemporary Art, Design, Photographs, Editions, Watches, and Jewelry, Phillips offers professional services and advice on all aspects of collecting. Auctions and exhibitions are held at salerooms in New York, London, Geneva, and Hong Kong, while clients are further served through representative offices based throughout Europe, the United States and Asia. Phillips also offers an online auction platform accessible anywhere in the world. In addition to providing selling and buying opportunities through auction, Phillips brokers private sales and offers assistance with appraisals, valuations, and other financial services.
*Estimates do not include buyer’s premium; prices achieved include the hammer price plus buyer’s premium.
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