Sotheby's Lifts the Curtain on One of the Most Important Sales Series Ever Staged

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05 Nov, 2021, 12:00 GMT

$1 BILLION WORTH OF ART ACROSS 7 SALES IN 1 WEEK - Unveiled Today in Sotheby's New York Galleries -

From The Legendary Macklowe Collection Through to 'The Now' Auction, Dedicated to Today's Frontrunners

AUCTIONS 15-19 NOVEMBER

NEW YORK, Nov. 5, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Featuring more than 680 lots that together comprise one of the most important sale series ever staged, the full complement of Sotheby's November auction week is today unveiled to the public in its entirety in Sotheby's New York Galleries.

Carrying a combined estimate in the region of $1 billion, the exhibition and sales will be anchored by the celebrated Macklowe Collection - one of the greatest collections of any kind ever to come to the market. The November offering will include 35 works from the collection, each one a masterpiece in its own right. (See here and here for further details). These will be presented alongside three further Evening sales, featuring standout works from the late 19th century through to art executed in the last 20 years, including Banksy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mark Bradford, Leonora Carrington, Jordan Casteel, Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Claude Monet, Yoshitomo Nara, and many more, as well as 50 works from the collection of the storied art collector and great television production Douglas S. Cramer, including Roy Lichtenstein's masterpiece Two Paintings…Craig – a gift from the artist and a symbol of their close friendship. The week of evening sales will also include a dedicated, single lot auction of The Constitution of the United States, sold to benefit the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation.

Selected highlights from the forthcoming season:

Alberto Giacometti's Le Nez (estimate $70/90 million), from the celebrated Macklowe Collection, is one of the artist's most important and powerful sculptures. Bringing together references to Surrealism and African sculpture, Le Nez summarizes the existential angst that is at the heart of Giacometti's work. No other example of this extraordinary sculpture has ever appeared at auction, the majority of casts having been acquired almost immediately by major museums around the world.
Also from The Macklowe Collection is Mark Rothko's magisterial No. 7 (estimate $70/90 million). Painted in 1951, the work dates the key moment in the early 1950s during which Rothko developed his signature style of abstraction and mature mode of artistic expression. Having once belonged to American collector Sarah Campbell Blaffer, who assembled one of the most important collections of modern art in the United States during the 20th century, the painting has been included in several major exhibitions of Rothko's oeuvre, including the traveling retrospective exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Art in 1998.
Frida Kahlo's 1949 self-portrait, Diego y yo (Diego and I): Kahlo's final, fully realized 'bust' self-portrait completed before her death in 1954, this enigmatic double portrait with the artist's husband, Diego Rivera, is a quintessential example of her singular approach to portraiture. Estimated at $30/50m, this intense and emotional work is poised to shatter her current auction record of $8 million achieved in 2016. It may become the most valuable work of Latin American art ever sold at auction. To be offered in the Modern Art Evening sale. See dedicated release here.
Claude Monet's magnificent Coin du bassin aux nymphéas from 1918, a late masterpiece a late masterpiece displaying the artist's famous waterlilies in his Giverny garden, comes to the market for the first time in nearly 25 years, carrying an estimate in excess of $40m. It is joined in the Modern Art Evening Auction by a further three paintings by Monet, including his seductive 1888 coastal scene, Antibes vue de la Salis (estimate $10/15 million). Separate release on Coin du bassin aux nymphéas available here.