Sotheby’s is preparing to bring works from the collection of the late art dealer and financier Robert Mnuchin to an auction in New York in May, adding a new trove of blue-chip material to the auction house as it looks to build on blistering sales in November and a strong start to its spring auctions.
The shipment includes approximately 25 works from the personal collection of Robert and his wife, Adriana Mnuchin, who have long been renowned among collectors for their focus on museum-quality works of postwar abstract and modern art.
Related articles
The sale will be led by Rothko’s monumental canvas from 1957 brown and black redestimated at $70 million to $100 million, and a second Rothko from 1949, estimated at $15 million to $20 million.
Nearly eight feet tall, brown and black red Dating back to Rothko’s most important decade, when the artist developed the luminous stacked ribbons that defined his mature oeuvre. The painting, created in the artist’s coveted red palette, once belonged to the firm of Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, which shortly after signed Rothko’s commission for the famous Seagram Building. Sotheby’s notes that the painting is one of 15 monumental paintings created by the artist in 1957, most of which are now in museum collections.
The second work, No. 1 (1949), comes from a key transitional moment in Rothko’s career, when the artist moved away from the vague “many forms” compositions of the late 1940s toward the signature rectangular color fields of the coming years.
The sale will also feature works by artists Mnuchin championed throughout his career, including Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Jeff Koons, including de Kooning’s “1983” UntitledXLIIthe first time a lyrical painting has come to auction and one of the most important works from the artist’s last decade to come to the market in recent years.
Klein’s main works, Harleman (1960), will also appear on the block. The monumental black-and-white canvas, created during the height of the artist’s career, has remained in Mnuchin’s collection for more than two decades and is expected to be one of the most significant works by the artist to come to auction in years.
The release of Mnuchin’s material comes as Sotheby’s seeks to maintain the momentum it built late last year. In November, when Gustav Klimt portrait of elizabeth lederer (1914-16) sold for $236.4 million, the highest price ever paid for a work of modern art at auction and the most expensive work of art ever sold by Sotheby’s.
The company also heads into spring with encouraging signals from Europe. Earlier this week, Sotheby’s modern and contemporary evening sale in London achieved white-glove status, with a total of about $175 million per lot sold, more than double the equivalent sales a year ago.
For many in the market, Mnuchin’s consignment is exactly the kind of trophy-quality material auction houses are eager to acquire as the high-end market stabilizes after several shaky seasons.
Sotheby’s confirmed the sale on Friday, saying the works will be featured in an 11-lot dedicated evening sale in May, with additional works also available in the auction house’s Modern and Contemporary Day Sale.
Mnuchin, who died in December at age 92, was one of the few figures in the art world who launched two careers at the highest levels. After three decades at Goldman Sachs, where he helped pioneer major deals, he opened a gallery and eventually founded the Mnuchin Gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, specializing in museum-quality exhibitions of artists such as Rothko and de Kooning.
Yet Mnuchin has always maintained that collecting, not trading, is his first instinct. “I’m a collector at heart and a dealer at the same time,” he said in a 2015 interview. art news.
He and Adriana began buying art seriously in the 1970s, gradually gravitating toward abstract art and artists from the postwar New York School. “We discovered that we respond to abstraction,” Mnuchin recalled.
The series itself is very compact. Mnuchin has said the couple only owns “10 to 15 photos,” though he has acknowledged that the works are of high quality and are kept at home rather than in storage.
