Masterworks from Willem de Kooning Family Collection to Make Auction Debut at Sotheby’s this November

DE KOONING | DECADES

THREE MASTERWORKS BY WILLEM DE KOONING

EMERGE ON THE MARKET FOR THE FIRST TIME FROM

THE DE KOONING FAMILY COLLECTION

Spanning Three Pivotal Decades,

The Works Trace Evolution of de Kooning’s Oeuvre  

With a Combined Estimate in Excess of $50 Million

The Paintings Will Star in Sotheby’s Contemporary Evening Auction this November

A singular masterwork of de Kooning’s oeuvre, Untitled, circa 1979, is from a remarkable period of work for the artist, marked by a bold and assured stroke. Few of these paintings have ever appeared on the market, and none as exceptionally stunning as Untitled, circa 1979. It is quintessentially de Kooning yet one-of-a-kind. Representing a transformative moment for de Kooning, Untitled represents the magnificent culmination of the artist’s pivotal cycle of 1970s masterworks and epitomizes the richly worked surfaces the highly gestural, colorful canvases of this period, which rank among the artist’s most highly sought after works, while also foreseeing the refined, compositional lyricism of his late masterworks from the 1980s.

As Montauk II evokes a summer’s sand and light, this painting beautifully conjures the sea – which was a few miles from the artist’s beloved Springs, East Hampton studio, where the work was painted – and immediately recalls the late Nymphéas of Claude Monet—it was even affectionately referred to as “the Monet” by the de Kooning family—and in particular the Impressionist master’s depiction of water mirroring the changing atmosphere of the sky. The surface of Untitled is uniquely remarkable for its vibrant blue, green, and yellow Impressionistic coloration, a combination not used elsewhere in this way within de Kooning’s output, underscoring its exceptional quality and transcending the rare moment from when it was painted.

Willem de Kooning, The Hat Upstairs

1987, Oil on canvas

Estimate $8-12 million

Unveiled to the public for the first time, after remaining in the de Kooning Family Collection for more than three decades and never before publicly exhibited, The Hat Upstairs from 1987 is a masterwork of the artist’s 1980s canvases.

The Hat Upstairs singularly embodies the vibrancy, lyrical abstraction, and deft painterly intention of de Kooning’s final and celebrated decade. The year of this work, 1987, was an especially productive and successful year for de Kooning, and within this late period, in which de Kooning experimented with his work considerably in each year, The Hat Upstairs stands out as a major work. The saturated pigment forming harmonious lines and forms that counterbalance one another, and speak to de Kooning’s admiration for the late cutouts by Henri Matisse. Like Matisse, de Kooning distilled a lifetime’s creativity into a highly reduced language of color and line in his late works; here, the gestural strokes and heavy impasto of his earlier output are distilled into graceful ribbons and harmonious arabesques of color.

The Hat Upstairs reveals one of de Kooning’s preoccupations during the 1980s: the almost Zen-like balance and tension of positive and negative, of movement and color, and the balance between them that gives the works form and breath. When positioned in relation to his earlier work, The Hat Upstairs reveals a captivating evolution within the artist’s career, expressing the breadth of his achievements in formulating the abstract language of 20th century art, as well as his ceaseless ability to continue refining and innovating his style.

DE KOONING | DECADES Exhibition Schedule:

Hong Kong: 2 – 8 October

London: 8 – 12 October

Paris: 19 – 24 October

Los Angeles: 26 – 29 October

New York: 4 – 16 November

WATCH: DE KOONING | DECADES 

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