PRESS RELEASE
POST-WAR TITANS LEAD PHILLIPS’ EVENING SALE OF MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART
Works by Francis Bacon and Joan Mitchell to Headline Auction on 19 November
To be Offered Alongside Out of This World, a Special Section of the New York Sales Dedicated to Objects of Natural History,
Including Cera, the Juvenile Triceratops
Francis Bacon
Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer, 1967
Estimate: $13,000,000 – 18,000,000
NEW YORK – 3 NOVEMBER 2025 – Phillips is proud to announce highlights from the upcoming Evening Sale of Modern & Contemporary Art in New York on 19 November, led by masterworks from Post-War luminaries Francis Bacon, Joan Mitchell, and Jackson Pollock. The sale brings together a dynamic selection of works that span generations and media — from Bacon’s rare diptych Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer to Mitchell’s sweeping nine-foot canvas Untitled, Pollock’s pivotal work on paper from circa 1947, and Pissarro’s iconic depiction of Éragny. Also featured are Mark Tansey’s Surrealist landscape Revelever and Alma Thomas’ vibrant Untitled, alongside weaving-based works by Ruth Asawa and Olga de Amaral, whose market momentum continues following Phillips’ record-setting result this spring. Presented in tandem with Out of This World, a special section of the November sales dedicated to natural history, the Evening Sale reflects the breadth and depth of Phillips’ distinct offerings. Leading up to the auction, the exhibition at 432 Park Avenue will be open to the public from 8-18 November.
Robert Manley, Chairman, Modern & Contemporary Art, said, “This season’s Evening Sale brings together some of the most resonant voices across Impressionist, Modern, Post-War, and Contemporary art. From Bacon’s psychological intensity to Mitchell’s lyrical abstraction and Asawa’s sculptural clarity, each work speaks to a distinct vision. We’re seeing collectors respond with growing enthusiasm to material innovation, historical significance, and fresh-to-market works, and this sale is a direct response to that demand. Phillips remains committed to curating across categories and generations, delivering the kind of thoughtful, high-impact offerings our clients are actively seeking — including the addition of Out of This World, a special section dedicated to natural history, led by the extraordinary juvenile Triceratops, Cera.”
Leading the Evening Sale is Francis Bacon’s Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer, 1967, a rare and poignant diptych created at the height of the artist’s most celebrated decade. It is one of only two diptychs to depict Rawsthorne and Dyer together, two of Bacon’s most important and enduring companions. Rawsthorne, an accomplished artist and set designer, and Dyer, Bacon’s lover and muse, were central figures in his Soho circle and inspired some of his most iconic portraits. In this deeply personal composition, Bacon probes the duality of self through their likenesses, distilling physical, emotional, and psychological nuance into a powerful meditation on identity and intimacy. Executed in Bacon’s compact format, with each oil-on-canvas panel measuring 14 x 12 inches and rendered in expressive sweeps of thick impasto against a rich forest-green ground, the work has appeared at auction only once previously in the nearly six decades since its execution.
Also among the top lots of the sale is Joan Mitchell’s Untitled, 1957–1958, a monumental canvas created at the height of her New York years, just before her move to France. Stretching over nine feet wide, the work reveals Mitchell’s mastery of gesture and color as vehicles for emotional and spatial complexity. Coils of red, yellow, and green surge across a luminous white ground, gathering toward a tensile, breathing core that seems to hover between expansion and collapse. Though resolutely abstract, the painting evokes remembered landscapes and sensations, translating memory into motion. Mitchell’s brushwork — muscular yet airborne, spontaneous yet calibrated — embodies the charged equilibrium that defines her art: a fusion of intellect and instinct, rhythm, and restraint.
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