Exquisite Basquiat Triptych Expected To Fetch $45 Million Leads Christie’s Blockbuster Spring Sales

The word “NUBA,” referencing the indigenous inhabitants of central Sudan, hovers above two African masks with hollow eye sockets and gritted teeth hinting at burial that greet us from the left canvas of a monumental triptych. We shift to ancient Egypt in the central panel, expressed through hieroglyphics, sarcophagal figures, and a sickle boat petroglyph amplified with the polysemous term “SICKLE” emblazoned below. We journey into contemporary society via the third panel which conveys present-day racism, every symbol, motif, brushstroke, and text executed with masterful exuberance.

El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile) (1983), one of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s most technically sophisticated masterpieces also known as “The History Of Black People,” is the magnificent visceral highlight of Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale on May 15 and the star of Spring Marquee Week featuring gallery after gallery of rare and exquisite works across genres, styles, and mediums. It’s on public view at Rockefeller Center ahead of the live auction where it’s expected to fetch some $45 million. Partial proceeds of the sale of the painting from a distinguished collection are intended to benefit the Accademia Valentino, founded in founded in 2013 “to promote excellence, strengthen the company culture, and support and inspire people in their professional growth and development.”

“In this painting, Basquiat is only 22 years old and he’s grappling with being at the height of his fame and also with a very personal work on difficult subjects,” Isabella Lauria, Head of 21st Century Evening Sale, said at last night’s press preview, describing the myriad art historical and Black history references erupting from the canvases. “We really see Basquiat at the peak of his talent (and) his gesture as a colorist. This is an incredible painting, you rarely see such a spectrum of turquoises and blues and pinks. It is incredibly loaded with symbolism, and it’s a very personal narrative as well.”

You’ll want to devote time to navigating the array of works on view demonstrating the depth and breadth of a variety of world-leading collectors with singular visions and goals.

“This season you will see and you will hear very much about the idea of the collection and the collector or the collectors. It’s very important to point this out because we tried very hard to focus on collections … In times that are politically uncertain, it’s good to come with traditional collections that are built over years and over generations. It is a wonderful thing because we believe that it gives you a certainty that something was not bought just on a whim quickly yesterday and is being resold, but was collected well with with the ideas and with the passion of the collectors,” Alex Rotter, Christie’s Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, said last night.

We travel back a half century to encounter evidence of Picasso’s fluidity across painting and sculpture in his inimitable and exquisite Nature morte à la fenêtre, a unique portrait of his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter executed in 1932, the Modern master’s most sought-after year by collectors. It is expected to sell in the region of $40 million.

“He did a very famous series of plaster busts of Marie-Thérèse the year before, in 1931, and here he’s bringing her into the two dimensional form of painting in the form of the sculpture. If you get close to really see the handling, you’ll see that the column (holding her bust) is actually mixed with some sort of spackling material and (he) applied it with a palette knife in order to really build up and give a very sculptural presence to the profile of Marie-Thérèse. This is in contrast with the very smooth fluid brushwork of the rest of the still life scene. He’s creating a dialogue here between sculpture and painting between the artist and the subject,” said Vanessa Fusco, Head of Impressionist & Modern Art and Co-Head of 20th Century Evening Sale.

We’re met with an explosion of bold color in L’Arlésienne, another Picasso executed five years later and featured among the six Modern and Post-War paintings the Masterpieces from the media mogul S.I. Newhouse Collection before we turn our gaze to Willem de Kooning’s monochromatic and arresting Orestes (1947). Hints of pink and ochre peek out of the black and white shapes and lines, underscoring the range of emotion. The enamel and paper collage on panel boasts an estimate in excess of $25 million.

Max Carter, Vice Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, described Orestes as “The most important black and white painting in 20th century America.”

“He is fascinated with symbolism, with Art Nouveau,” said Carter. “He’s coming off the harshest, worst years of his life. … He’s on the cusp of fame and money and alcohol and all these things that we’ve heard of him, but at this moment is just (painting) for himself.”

Tucked away in a gallery designed to replicate the size of Henri Rousseau’s cozy studio, Carter guided us through the process of creating the sublime Les Flamants (1910), which is expected to sell for between $20 million and $30 million as the gem of Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale.

Carter described the painting, which is poised to shatter Rousseau’s record of $4.4 million set three decades ago at Christie’s London, as “the rarest painting in the building, and this is the rarest painting we have sold all season. It might be the rarest painting (we sell) all year.”

“He began painting these monumental jungle scenes. This was someone who never left Paris and he was a customs clerk. He worked full time until the 1890s. So he’s painting on weekends and nights and mornings and he painted all of these things from his imagination,” Carter explained.

We traverse A Century of Art: The Gerald Fineberg Collection, beginning with a divine 1923 Man Ray painting of the muse of Modernity, Kiki de Montparnasse, and move forward with far-reaching works by artists of color, women artists, and artists who Fineberg recognized well ahead of the markets, such as Barkley Hendricks, Beauford Delaney, Ruth Asawa, Alma Thomas, and Alice Neel. This collection alone, hung in a jaw-dropping maximalist style mimicking how Fineberg displayed the works in his Boston apartment, is museum worthy and indicative of a true visionary.

My 13-year-old son Michael lingered over many of the master works, marveling at the sculptural brushstrokes popping from Kazuo Shiraga’s large-scale thunderous abstract 1988 painting Hoshōkai (Lop Nur). My gaze was drawn especially to Neel’s unrivaled double portrait of The De Vegh Twins (1975), swooning over the mingling of purples and reds and the nuances of color adding complexity to the girls’ dark hair. The painting is expected to sell for between $1.2 million and $1.8 million.

“We really feel that this niche collection foreshadows what we see in market trends today, and that is a critical and commercial reevaluation of female artists, artists of color, and other categories in collecting groups and artists groups that Jerry was in way before they became in vogue, that Alice Neel is a great example,” said Sara Friedlander, Deputy Chairman, Post-War and Contemporary Art. “ I’ve always loved Alice Neel … Jerry bought this painting in 1985, way before many people were talking about Alice. Alice painted it in 1975. It’s a depiction of two daughters of a friend of hers … and she loved the painting so much that when she finished it she executed a second painting so that she could keep one. This is the one that she kept through life. And when she died, Jerry bought it directly from the estate via Robert Miller for $70,000, which was actually quite a big purchase at the time.”

We view the previous century of art through the keen eyes of Alan and Dorothy Press, whose carefully curated Depth of Field collection, led by Ed Ruscha’s Burning Standard (1968), which is expected to sell for between $20 million and $30 million. As wildly successful commodities traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the couple likely viewed art collecting with the same forward-looking perspective that led to their professional achievements, a different approach than those observing and reacting to what the market at the moment covets most. In their final collection, they focused attention on attaining nine exceptional paintings by Ed Ruscha, three by Philip Guston, as well as works from Man Ray, Henri Matisse, and Ken Price.

“This is the only Standard station with this radiating sky. It is one of only two of the Standard stations that has the burning flames. This one is, I think, particularly fascinating because of the beautiful Surrealist facet of the sunset,” said Emily Kaplan, Co-Head of the 20th Century Evening Sale. “There are real ties to Surrealism, even in this very contemporary painting, which even today feels quite contemporary. In 2007, Christie’s sold the other gas station with flames for a record price of almost $7 million, which almost doubled the Ruscha record at auction.”