When Agnes Gund purchased Mark Rothko’s 1964 abstraction No. 15 (Two Greens and Crimson Stripe) in 1967, she bought it straight from the artist in his studio. The portray would go on to hold in her front room for many years. This Might, will probably be supplied on the secondary marketplace for the primary time, main a targeted group of works from her assortment at Christie’s.
The public sale home introduced in the present day that it’s going to supply three items from the non-public holdings of Gund, who died last September, throughout its marquee May sales in New York: the Rothko, estimated within the area of $80 million; Cy Twombly’s 1961 Untitled, estimated at $40 million to $60 million; and Joseph Cornell’s 1948 Untitled (Medici Princess), estimated at $3 million to $5 million.
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The grouping is small however severe. Rothko, Twombly, and Cornell all artists who reshaped postwar artwork in distinct methods, and these works are ones Gund, a longtime trustee of the Museum of Fashionable Artwork and its president from 1991 to 2002, lived with, not simply collected. That provenance will nearly definitely drive up collector curiosity and bidding for the work.
The Rothko is the clear headline lot. Painted in 1964, the canvas rises greater than seven ft tall. Deep greens and indigo fields are held in place by a pointy red-orange stripe that cuts throughout the decrease third. Gund first noticed it throughout a studio go to, and it stays considered one of solely a handful of Rothko work purchased straight from the artist which might be nonetheless in personal fingers. For years, it anchored her condominium, a day by day presence relatively than a trophy on mortgage to historical past.
Mark Rothko, No. 15 (Two Greens and Crimson Stripe), 1964.
Courtesy Christie’s Photos Ltd.
The Twombly, made in Rome in 1961, comes from a pivotal interval when his looping strains and bursts of pigment felt newly pressing. Works of comparable scale and ambition now sit in main museum collections. The Cornell, in contrast, is intimate. Created round 1948, the field development layers Renaissance imagery with discovered supplies to create one of many artist’s dreamlike stage units. Collectively, the three works supply a snapshot of Gund’s vary as a collector, from monumental abstraction to quiet, meticulous assemblage.
For Christie’s, the sale lands at a second when the market is once more hungry for fresh-to-market property with clear provenance. The Rothko has by no means appeared at public sale. It comes from a single-owner assortment that carries each institutional and emotional weight. In a season when sellers are cautious and consumers selective, that sort of story issues.
Gund was excess of a collector with good timing. Born in Cleveland in 1938, she started shopping for artwork critically within the Sixties and joined MoMA’s Worldwide Council in 1967 after which the board in 1976. She served because the museum’s president from 1991 to 2002 and donated greater than 1,000 works to the museum over the course of her life, together with lots of extra to different establishments. She helped convey the P.S. 1 Modern Artwork Middle beneath MoMA’s umbrella in 1999 and served on the board of the newly fashioned MoMA PS1 till her loss of life.
Lengthy earlier than museums made some extent of broadening their collections, Gund was shopping for work by girls and artists of shade and urging establishments to do the identical. She spent as a lot time in artists’ studios as she did in boardrooms. Collecting, for her, was personal.
In 2017, she made headlines past the artwork world when she offered Roy Lichtenstein’s Masterpiece for $165 million and directed roughly $100 million of the proceeds towards the Artwork for Justice Fund, an initiative targeted on felony justice reform. That transfer reframed how some collectors take into consideration the ability of a single portray.
The three works coming to Christie’s usually are not being offered to fund a public initiative. They arrive as an alternative as a last chapter in a set that has already reshaped museums throughout the nation. Earlier than the Might public sale, the Rothko and Twombly will journey internationally, including a worldwide tour to works that after lived quietly on the partitions of her Park Avenue residence.
