NEW YORK, NY.- Phillips announced highlights from the New York Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art. Boasting a strong mix of Modern, Post-War, and Contemporary Art, with artists such as Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein, Yayoi Kusama, and Anna Weyant, the sale features 41 lots that represent the true breadth of the category. Leading the auction is an exceptional Banksy painting, Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search, executed in response to a 2017 exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work at the Barbican Centre in London. Works with fascinating backstories and provenance by Yayoi Kusama, Andy Warhol, and Robert Rauschenberg will also be among the star lots of the auction. The Evening Sale will take place on 17 May at 432 Park Avenue, following the Day Sale on 16 May.

Jean-Paul Engelen, President, Americas, and Robert Manley, Deputy Chairman, the Worldwide Co-Heads of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, said, “The May Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art embodies what our international team does best: it encapsulates the expansion of taste in the market that we have continued to see over the past several years. Alongside the masterwork by Banksy leading the auction, we have an outstanding work by Picasso inspired by the artist’s lover and muse, which stands in dialogue with more contemporary figurative painting by women artists, such as Caroline Walker’s Conservation, Mickalene Thomas’ Melody: Femme Noire, and Lisa Yuskavage’s The Mound. The Evening and Day Sales this season were thoughtfully composed to offer important works to collectors of all backgrounds and interests. We look forward to welcoming our collecting community to see the works in person, when our exhibition opens to the public on 6 May.”

Leading the Evening Sale is Banksy’s Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search. The celebrated homage to Basquiat was executed on panel in 2018, in response to the 2017 exhibition, Basquiat: Boom for Real in London. While Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search finds its visual basis in Basquiat’s Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, 1982, Banksy reinterprets Basquiat’s imagery—and rewrites his title—to shift the meaning of the work. Basquiat’s Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump is a joyous, blistering summer scene, with its two figures basking in the relief of the water from an open fire hydrant. Banksy’s reinterpretation, however, features the male figure being frisked by members of London’s Metropolitan Police, with the tricolor, Pan-African background removed. The male figure’s hands, raised perhaps in play or celebration in Basquiat’s original, become a clear “hands up” gesture in the presence of the police. A collaboration beyond space and time, Banksquiat. Boy and Dog in Stop and Search unites two street art giants in a cogent commentary on commodification and privilege in contemporary art.

Also among the Evening Sale highlights is Pablo Picasso’s Tête de femme au chignon, which is being offered at auction for the very first time and has never been exhibited publicly. One of the great portraitists of the 20th century, Picasso painted the work in 1952, the final year of his pivotal relationship with the artist Françoise Gilot. Facing to the left, the figure here sits with her hair pulled back in the titular chignon and gazes out a grey window marked by black bars. Growing out of a decade’s worth of work inspired by Gilot, Tête de femme au chignon navigates two of Picasso’s greatest post-war influences, Henri Matisse and the wider history of portraiture in Western art. With her sculpted, immutable expression, the figure in Tête de femme au chignon reaches beyond any specific model to reveal an artist disassembling the inherited norms of representation into an inventive and colorful portrait.

As previously announced, two significant early works by Yayoi Kusama from the collection of Agnes and Frits Becht will be offered in the sale, marking the first time they will be sold in nearly sixty years, following the original acquisition by the Bechts in 1965. The internationally-renowned pair of soft-sculpture works, Blue Spots and Red Stripes, are some of the earliest known examples of Kusama’s famous tuberous forms, iconic motifs that now define Kusama’s career. The works have been exhibited extensively around the world since their creation. As the record holder for Kusama’s work at auction, Phillips will include these important works in the upcoming Evening Sale.

Also among the highlights is Self-Portrait (Fright Wig) by Andy Warhol. Executed in 1986 for the influential gallerist, Anthony d’Offay, the work was previously owned by esteemed collector Richard Polsky, serving as the basis for his books, I Bought Andy Warhol and I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon), and appearing on the first book’s cover. The work, which is an exceptional example from the artist’s final series of self-portraits, previously sold at auction in 2005 for $374,400 and is now being offered for $800,000-1.2 million, a testament to the strength of Warhol’s market.

Further examples of Post-War highlights from the auction include Robert Motherwell’s An Ungainly Figure, exhibited alongside G. David Thompson’s influential collection, and Helen Frankenthaler’s On the Road, a fine example of the artist’s mature painting practice, which graced the cover of the catalogue for her 1980 exhibition Neue Bilder (New Work) at André Emmerich Gallery, Zurich. The work hails from an important Los Angeles collection and Phillips’ Evening Sale marks the first time that it will be offered publicly.

The Evening Sale also includes a strong selection of works by artists still creating today. Yoshitomo Nara’s Guitar Girl depicts a young girl in a blue dress snarling as she shreds her guitar. The determined, yet strikingly cherubic figure epitomizes Nara’s classic type, the “Ramona” (named for the Ramones), a feisty character who embodies youthful rebellion and ferocious self-determination. With the rounded facial features of Guitar Girl harkening back to traditional otafuku (or okame) theatrical masks, the work is a playful interpretation of American rock and roll, and traditional and contemporary Japanese art.

As the record holder for María Berrío and Caroline Walker, Phillips is proud to present exceptional examples by both artists this month. Berrío’s No One Can Hear You, Only the Wind was executed in 2012 and is a richly detailed example of María Berrío’s signature collage and watercolor technique. Also among the contemporary highlights is Julien Nguyen’s Jeu de Paume, 2015, with its geometric, ethereal aesthetic inspired as much by European medieval and Renaissance art as by Y2K videogame graphics.