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New York December Auction Season | Detailed Introduction on Selected Lots of Modern and Contemporary Art

The last round of the auction season in 2020 will kick off in December, with art oeuvres from Hong Kong, Paris, New York, Beijing and other locations are gathered at auctions. In this season, there are more than 800 masterpieces of modern and contemporary art has been brought to New York. Leading by David Hockney, Clyfford Still, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Pablo Picasso, Damien Hirst, William De Kooning and many other artists. Now, please follow ArtPro to focus on selected lots that will be presented in New York.


Featured Lot No.1:

Hockney's masterpiece of landscape painting Nichols Canyon was completed in 1980. It was painted at the beginning of his decades-long landscape period. It was Hockney's returning to painting after a brief exploration of the aesthetics in photography in 1970s, one of the only two representative masterpieces completed at the beginning. It has appeared in many of the most important exhibitions in his career, and has been in private collection for nearly 40 years and now in auction debut for the first time. The estimated price of this lot is still pending.

Featured Lot No.2:

After Clyfford Still died in 1980, about 2,400 works were completely isolated from the public and academia for more than two decades, only few works were released on auction. Ph-407 was completed in 1964, will be presented at New York on December 7, and the estimate is pending. On the vermilion background, the shinning white and solemn black wind up from the bottom. The orderly brushstrokes shows an intense tension. The seemingly simple picture has an incredible sense of movement among the interaction of colors.

Featured Lot No.3:

The large-scale work Portrait of A-One A.K.A. King was created in 1982, a crucial year of Jean-Michel Basquiat when he "formally appeared" on the international stage. The graffiti-filled picture is full of iconic images of Basquiat, including skulls, three-pointed crowns, repeated text and symbols of lines. This painting also fully demonstrates his skills of controlling colors: red, yellow, pink, black, and blue are intertwined together, that reflecting his strong creative power.

Featured Lot No.4:

The second-generation American female abstract expressionist artist Joan Mitchell, her abstract painting Untitled was created in 1953 is dominated by cool colors. The intensity of the color gradually weakens from the center to the edges, and the brushstrokes are crisscrossed. The subtle changes of colors revealing a profound artistic conception. This painting has been requested to be included in the upcoming Joan Mitchell retrospective exhibitions of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris from March 21, 2021 to February 27, 2023.

Featured Lot No.5:

Buste De Femme Assise was painted in June 1962. It is one of the important portraits of Pablo Picasso featuring his beloved wife, Jacqueline Roque. She is the partner of Picasso in his late years, and also the muse of his creations in the last period.Picasso extracted elements from the old works and used the "double-sided" technique to depict Jacqueline's face. This work took seven days to complete, with complex brushstrokes, showing Picasso's sophisticated skills at the end of his career.

Featured Lot No.6:

The famous American sculptor Alexander Calder is well-known for his unique activity sculptures. The presenting work Mariposa is Calder's classic dynamic sculpture work. He transforms hard metal into colorful and vibrant sculptures, with floating dynamics. The estimated price is between USD $6 to 8 million.

Featured Lot No.7:

Morris Louis is one of the representatives of American abstract expressionism, whose abstract paintings are based on colors. Beth Sin has a size of 233.4×287.7cm, the acrylic paint flows from the canvas like a waterfall, which is very dynamic. The yellow, blue, green, and red colors are mixing together while retaining the rich spectrum levels, showing their own special vitality between the edges, presenting a pure dream and abstract atmospheric elements.

Featured Lot No.8:

Claude Monet moved to the village of Giverny in Normandy in 1883, and dedicated himself to documenting the surrounding countryside. Vernon was completed in 1894, when he begin to capture the foggy fresh mornings and outbursts of sunshine, with delicate brushstrokes and thick pigments. He presented the subsequent beauty of the atmospheric effects. The work has been exhibited in worldwide since the second year of completion. After 1908, this work has been leased to the Brooklyn Museum and became the permanent collection in 1922. It has been preserved until it is released for auction.

Featured Lot No.9:

George Condo is famous for his bold reinterpretation of classical master paintings. He combined classical and innovative methods to subvert the hierarchical relationship between painting and sketching, beauty and weirdness, comedy and tragedy. The upcoming Transparent Female Form was completed in 2009.Condo used chalk, acrylic and gouache to interweave and overlap the straight lines, in order to present a three-dimensional portrait.The characters in the painting have multiple layers of expressions, showing the different mental states.

Featured Lot No.10:

In 1980s, Gerhard Richter developed a unique style in abstract painting. He deliberately arranged the image structure and used the scraping technique to stack the pigments into colorful textures. Abstractes Bild (678-1) was created in 1988, when the style of his abstract painting series was matured and the international reputation was rising. The length and width of this work are close to 1 meter. The image shows different levels of texture and effect under bright yellow. The estimated price of this work is between USD $3 to 5 million.

Featured Lot No.11:

Milton Avery is a pioneer in the American modern art movement. He created abstract works with highly personalized colors and minimalist compositions. The using thinned washes of red and blue pigments in Sunset Sea, which has a harmonious balance. Milton Avery used dots and lines to compose the image and filling it with tranquil beauty.

Featured Lot No.12:

Helen Frankenthaler, one of the most outstanding American female artists of the 20th century, who has set a personal auction record in New York in 2020. Frankenthaler developed a unique dipping and dyeing technique which had an important influence on many of the following painters. She splashed the oil paint on untreated canvas directly, the pigment would penetrates into the canvas, producing a watercolor-like effect. The presenting work this time is more than 2 meters high and 6.4 meters long. The vivid colors permeating on the canvas in a nearly symmetrical manner, like a regular movement of colors.

Other Selected Lots:


To view more details about the lot, please click the link below to enter the auctions.


HK time:Coming soon in December 4 at 23:30

Impressionist & Modern Art Day Sale
Christie's New York
4 Dec 2020, 10:30
20 Rockefeller Plaza New York NY 10020 Christie's New York New York


HK time:Coming soon in December 8 at 08:00

20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
Phillips New York
7 Dec 2020, 19:00
450 Park Avenue New York


HK time:Coming soon in December 8 at 23:00

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale Morning Session
Phillips New York
8 Dec 2020, 10:00
450 Park Avenue New York


HK time:Coming soon in December 9 at 03:30

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale Afternoon Session
Phillips New York
8 Dec 2020, 14:30
450 Park Avenue New York


HK time:Coming soon in December 9 at 07:00

Impressionist, Modern & Contemporary Art | An Evening Sale
Sotheby's New York
8 Dec 2020, 18:00
1334 York Avenue New York


HK time:Coming soon in December 11 at 23:00

American Art
Sotheby's New York
11 Dec 2020, 10:00
1334 York Avenue New York
Source: ArtPro Author: Li Shuai