NEW YORK, NY.- Phillips’ sale of Editions & Works on Paper, New York will livestream from New York and London to bidders worldwide across two sessions July 23-24. The sale features superlative works on paper and prints and multiples spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, including a dynamic selection of modern works by Escher, Dalí, Dubuffet, Marcoussis, Matisse and Miró, along with contemporary editions by Baldessari, Dine, Diebenkorn, Haring, Hockney, KAWS, Longo, Rauschenberg, Ruscha and Twombly. The day session of the sale also features a remarkable group of works never offered at auction before from the Museum of Modern Art benefitting the museum’s acquisition fund. This sale follows on a series of unprecedented online Editions sales that achieved record prices for prints by Genieve Figgis, Leon Polk Smith, Alexander Calder, Sonia Delaunay, Zao Wou-Ki, Peter Saul and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, amongst others.
Kelly Troester and Cary Leibowitz, Phillips’ Worldwide Co-Heads of Editions, said, “We are excited to be back offering a strong selection of works showcasing the best works from the 20th and 21st centuries through a combination of traditional live and enhanced online auction technologies. We were thrilled at the results of our three online Editions sales we held since April which averaged 98% sold by lot, and expect similar enthusiasm for this diverse group consigned from a number of estates and private collectors.”
The sale is anchored by the elegant Portrait de jeune fille, d'aeprès Cranach le Jeune by Pablo Picasso. This is Picasso’s first and most important linoleum cut print, made using four blocks printed in color and one in black. This particular impression demonstrates the dimensionality of the bold color, as well as the luxuriousness of the glossy, smooth black. Created in 1958 this influential work is indicative of Picasso’s inventiveness as an artist and his devotion to reimagining personally impactful art historical images. Portrait de jeune fille, has been written about extensively and exhibited in institutions and galleries worldwide.
Another highlight of our modern section is Wassily Kandinsky’s Kleine Welten (Little Worlds), a complete set of twelve prints. In this portfolio, each print’s self-contained composition brings to a mind a ‘little world’ bursting with cosmic energy, by way of floating geometrical shapes, dissolving checkerboards and wavy lines. The set includes four lithographs in colors, two woodcuts in color, two woodcuts in black and four drypoints in black on various papers. This portfolio demonstrates Kandinsky’s commitment to Gesamtkunstwerk, or ‘total work of art’, by presenting a breadth of printmaking techniques in one portfolio.
Printed in 1964 and published in 1965, Wayne Thiebaud’s Delights presents seventeen archetypal examples of the artist’s subject and style in etching. Formatted as a book, inherent to half the edition, Delights is an homage to life’s simple pleasures. Featuring images of pristine cakes lined up in a window and ice cream scoops piled high on cones, Delights marked the beginning of a more than 50-year printmaking partnership for Thiebaud at Crown Point Press in San Francisco.
Our Evening Sale features a group of colorful, lithographs by Joan Mitchell notably two large diptychs from 1992, Trees IV and Sunflowers III, as well as, Flowers I, from the Bedford Series. Additionally, the Evening Sale offers a group of quintessential Pop artworks by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. The works by Warhol include Marilyn, 1967; Alexander the Great, 1982; Mother and Child, from Cowboys and Indians, 1986; a complete set of four Hammer and Sickle, 1977, among others. Works by Lichtenstein include Reflections on Conversation, from Reflections Series, 1990; Water Lilies – Blue Lily Pads, from Water Lilies Series, 1992; the monumental abstract Imperfect Diptych 46 ¼” x 91 3/8”, from Imperfect Series, 1988, among others. Also included in our Evening Sale are exceptional examples of post-war German art including Sigmar Polke’s Sauberes Auto – gute Laune (Clean Car – Good Mood) a unique variant screenprint in colors on fabric, Blinky Palermo’s Happier than the Morning Sun ‘to Stevie Wonder’ four grano-lithographs in red and a plywood multiple, and an early Gerhard Richter Mao collotype from 1968.
A special group of works from the Museum of Modern Art, New York will be offered in the Day Sale to benefit the museum’s acquisitions fund. These works include iconic, early Pop prints by Roy Lichtenstein, specifically Crying Girl, 1963; Brushstroke, 1965; Sunrise, 1965; Landscape 1, from Ten Landscapes, 1967 and Whaam! Poster, 1967. The five early Lichtenstein works were bequest to the museum by collector Jan Cowles in 2019. Also being offered to benefit MoMA’s acquisition fund is Henry Moore’s Four Reclining Figures, a lithograph from 1973, bequest to MoMA by collectors Nina and Gordon Bunshaft. Gordon Bunshaft is a modern and post-war architect, whose notable buildings include the Lever House in New York and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.
