Displaying items by tag: Willem De Kooning

Millions of dollars worth of art was sold in London last week thanks to the Frieze art fairs. Frieze Masters, which is in its second year and presents works created before 2000, included the sale of Pablo Picasso’s Femme assise au chapeau (Acquavella Galleries) for $7 million, an abstract painting by Willem de Kooning for $8 million and two Jean-Michel Basquiat works for a combined $9.3 million.

Frieze London, which features established contemporary artists as well as promising newcomers, saw fewer big-ticket items. As the event drew to a close, Gagosian Gallery, which presented five highly anticipated works by Jeff Koons, had no confirmed sales. A sculpture by Takashi Murakami being offered by Hauser & Wirth was also still available as the fair winded down.

Frieze week also includes a number of contemporary art auctions and a number of satellite events, which added to the week’s hefty art sales.

A painting by Willem de Kooning from a rare and celebrated series will head to Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale on November 13, 2013 in New York. Executed in 1975, Untitled V is the prime example from the critical phase when de Kooning returned to painting after a period of sculpture-driven work. The painting has not been seen in public since 1980 and will go on view in London on October 12, 2013 before appearing in New York on October 31, 2013. Untitled V is expected to fetch anywhere from $25 million to $35 million.

The original series that Untitled V was a part of was created in six months exhibited at the Fourcade, Droll gallery in New York. The paintings stunned audiences with their explosive color palettes and wide variety of masterful brushstrokes. Tobias Meyer, Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s, said, “The unveiling of Untitled V and the other Fourcade gallery exhibition paintings in the autumn of 1975 marked the renaissance of Willem de Kooning. Today, the force of the work is as powerful and affecting as it was forty years ago.”

The auction record for any de Kooning works was set at Christie’s New York in 2006 when Untitled XXV (1977) sold for $27.1 million. The painting also set the record for the highest price paid for a Post-War work at the time.

Glafira Rosales, the Long Island-based art dealer accused of selling fake artworks to the acclaimed galleries Knoedler & Co. and Julian Weissman Fine Art, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. During her 15-year scheme, Rosales admitted to selling counterfeit works that mimicked the styles of modern masters including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko as well as swindling unsuspecting customers out of over $80 million.

When Rosales brought the forgeries, which were painted by a Queens-based artist in his home studio, to Knoedler and Weissman, she claimed that they were never-before-exhibited and previously unknown works of art. She admitted to arranging for funds from the sales to be funneled to banks in Spain and failed to claim a large portion of the income on her tax returns.

Rosales pleaded guilty to nine charges including wire fraud, tax fraud and money laundering. While the charges carry a potential sentence of up to 99 years, Rosales could be handed a lighter sentence if she cooperates with authorities and shares what she knows with prosecutors, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Rosales’ sentencing has been set for March 18, 2013 but will likely be delayed.

Ann Freedman, former president of the disgraced gallery Knoedler & Co., filed a defamation suit on Wednesday, September 11 in New York State Supreme Court. Freedman helmed the historic gallery until it closed in 2011 amidst charges that it had sold forged artworks worth nearly $80 million.

In her case, Freedman declared that she did due diligence in researching a collection that was presented to her and listed nearly 20 experts, including curators from the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, that told her that the works were authentic. However, in many of these cases, the comments were unofficial and decidedly vague.

Freedman’s case is aimed at Manhattan art dealer Marco Grassi who was quoted in a New York magazine as saying “A gallery person has an absolute responsibility to do due diligence, and I don’t think she did it. The story of the paintings is so totally kooky. I mean, really. It was a great story and she just said, ‘this is great.’”

Long Island-based art dealer Glafira Rosales and her boyfriend are allegedly responsible for selling the 60 forgeries to Knoedler & Co. The couple claimed that the works were authentic masterpieces by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. It was recently discovered that they were painted by an artist in his home studio in Queens.  

The Willem de Kooning Foundation will sell 10 of the Abstract Expressionist artist’s paintings in an effort to raise over $30 million for an endowment that would support the organization’s research and scholarship endeavors. The works, which were created between 1983 and 1985, will be on view at the Gagosian Gallery in New York as part of the exhibition Willem de Kooning: Ten Paintings, 1983-1985 from November 8 to December 21, 2013.

John Elderfield, a consultant for the Gagosian Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art’s chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture, will organize the exhibition. A portion of the sale’s proceeds will go towards hiring a team of researchers to compile and publish a catalogue raisonné for de Kooning as there is currently no detailed, annotated guide of the artist’s works.

Before showing signs of dementia in the late 1980s, the decade was a highly prolific period for the artist who painted over 300 canvases during this time.

Michael Altman Fine Art in New York is suing Pace Gallery in Seattle over a damaged painting by Willem de Kooning worth $6.4 million. Michael Altman Fine Art had purchased Untitled IV from Pace last December. The Abstract Expressionist canvas was later sent to a prospective buyer in Dallas who upon receiving the painting discovered a horizontal mark where packing materials had been adhered directly to the canvas. James Sowell, a Dallas-based real estate developer, turned down the painting after seeing the damage.

In a case filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Michael Altman Fine Art claimed that Pace failed to take proper and adequate precautions while packing and handling the work. The gallery is suing to recover the $1.25 million it will cost to repair the painting.  

The Denver Art Museum and the Clyfford Still Museum will present Picasso to Pollock: Modern Masterworks from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery from March 2, 2014 through June 8, 2014. The sprawling exhibition will bring together approximately 50 works by more than 40 significant artists from the late 19^th century to the present. The show is drawn from the holdings of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, which boasts one of the finest collections of 20^th century art in the country.

Modern Masterworks will present works by Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. The exhibition charts the evolution of modern art, starting with post-Impressionism and moving on to a number of groundbreaking movements such as Cubism, Surrealism, Pop Art and Minimalism. A large portion of Modern Masterworks is comprised of works by mid-century American artists such as Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell.

A related exhibition, 1959, will be on view at the Clyfford Still Museum from February 14, 2014 through June 15, 2014. The show re-creates Still’s seminal exhibition held at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in 1959. Still, one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism was a contemporary of Pollock, de Kooning, Motherwell and Rothko.

Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the Denver Art Museum, said, “Not only are most of the iconic artists of the time represented, but the works themselves are masterpieces from each artist.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s (1960-1988) neo-expressionist painting Untitled (1982) sold for $29 million at Christie’s in London on June 25, 2013, surpassing its pre-sale estimate of $24.7 million. The work, which was acquired by the seller for $1.7 million in 2002, sold to a telephone bidder. Untitled was painted in the same year as Dustheads, the Basquiat painting that sold for $48.8 million in May 2013, setting the record for the artist at auction.

Other highlights from the Post-War and Contemporary art sale included Roy Lichtenstein’s (1923-1977) Cup of Coffee (1961), which sold for $4.2 million and exceeded its $3 million high estimate; Willem de Kooning’s (1904-1997) uncharacteristically serene Untitled XXVIII, which brought $4.4 million, well past its high estimate of $3.5 million; and Yves Klein’s (1928-1962) SE 181 (1961), a sculpture in the artist’s signature blue hue, which garnered $4.1 million, surpassing its high estimate of $2.7 million. However, not all lots fared so well. Andy Warhol’s (1928-1987) Colored Campbell’s Soup Can (1965) failed to meet its low estimate of $3.4 million due to its unpopular color palette. Steven S. Cohen, the disgraced founder and CEO of SAC Capital Advisors LP, previously owned the work.

Overall, the sale realized a total of $108.4 million and sold 90% by value and 80% by lot. Francis Outred, International Director and Head of Post-War & Contemporary Art, said, “Overall the auction showed an intelligent, solid market and a depth of global bidding, which is a testament to the worldwide interest in Post-War and Contemporary art.”

After bursting on the art scene in the late 1940s, Abstract Expressionism dominated American art, criticism, and commentary throughout the 1950s. Artists of the revolutionary Abstract Expressionist School rejected the widely accepted values that ruled post-war America and looked to emotion, rebellion, spontaneity, and movement for inspiration.

AB-EX / RE-CON: Abstract Expressionism Reconsidered, which is now on view at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn, New York on Long Island, explores both the best-known and less familiar artists of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Organized by the museum’s director, Karl Emil Willers, AB-EX features over 80 works by 50 artists including those readily associated with Abstract Expressionism such as Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1933), Hans Hofmann (1880-1966), Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), Franz Kline (1910-1962), Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), and Mark Rothko (1903-1970).

However, it is the inclusion of the lesser-known Abstract Expressionists that sets AB-EX apart. The exhibition features the works of Jon Schueler (1916-1992), a student of Diebenkorn who explored landscapes through the lens of abstraction; Fritz Bultman (1919-1985), who studied under Hofmann and favored bold, gestural forms; and often overlooked female Abstract Expressionists such a Grace Hartigan (1922-2008), Perle Fine (1908-1988), and Judith Godwin (b. 1930). The comprehensive exhibition illustrates the breadth and diversity of a single movement that is often reduced to a handful of artists and stylistic approaches.

AB-EX / RE-CON: Abstract Expressionism Reconsidered is on view through June 16, 2013.

Steven Cohen, an American hedge fund manager and founder of SAC Capital Advisors LP, purchased Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) La Reve (1932) from casino tycoon Steve Wynn for $155 million. The sale marks the highest price paid by a U.S. collector for an artwork.

Cohen and Wynn have been in discussion about the sale since 2006. Originally, Wynn agreed to sell the painting to Cohen for $139 million but the transaction was cancelled after Wynn, whose vision is compromised, put his elbow through the canvas. The work has since been restored and the repair was factored into the selling price.

The sale comes less than two weeks after SAC Capital settled an ongoing insider trading case with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for $600 million; it was the largest insider trading settlement in history. Cohen, who started collecting art in 2001, has an expansive collection that includes works by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Jasper Johns (b. 1930), and Gerhard Richter (b. 1932).