Auction introduction: Celebrating the most significant movements of the modern and post-war eras, this November’s 20th Century Evening Sale showcases the vanguard artists who defined the period. As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of André Breton’s groundbreaking Manifeste du surréalisme, his first Surrealist manifesto published in October 1924, the auction includes a number of iconic works by masters connected to Dada and Surrealism, including René Magritte, Marcel Duchamp and the artists inspired by their daring precedents. The sale is also highlighted by ground-breaking champions of Abstract Expressionism, including Willem de Kooning, American visionaries Georgia O’Keeffe and Frank Stella, minimalist masterpieces from artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, and bolstered by highlights by renowned leaders of modernism Pablo Picasso and François-Xavier Lalanne. This season we continue to celebrate Impressionist master Claude Monet with seminal pieces of exceptional provenance, including Pommiers en fleurs, his seminal 1872 masterpiece consigned from the historic collection of the Union League Club of Chicago. The auction is led by Ed Ruscha’s iconic Standard Station, Ten-Cent Western Being Torn in Half, one of the most significant works by the artist to come to market. Housed in a private collection for nearly fifty years, this seminal early masterpiece showcases Ruscha’s celebrated Standard Station series in a large format spanning over ten feet and brings together the artist’s iconic compositional hallmarks of strong perspectival diagonals, texts and decontextualised imagery. We are honoured to present The Rockefeller Mitchells: Science for the Benefit of Humanity, two masterpieces by Joan Mitchell: City Landscape and Untitled, both painted in 1955, a year which Mitchell recognized then and later as a watershed in her career. This season is represented by other esteemed collections, including Beyond Form: A Revolution in Expression, led by Willem de Kooning's Untitled from 1982, and Modern Maven: The Collection of Leslie Feely.