Jackson Pollock (1912 – 1956)
Number 5 (Elegant Lady), 1951
Estimate: US$ 15.000.000 – 20.000.000
© 2014 Pollock – Krasner Foundation /
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New Yo
Jackson Pollock
“Number 19, 1948”
$58,363,750 (£38,520,075 / €45,523,725) at Christie’s, May 2013
World auction record for a painting by Pollock
Christie’s to sell Pollock’s “Number 5 (Elegant Lady)” On May 13, 2014, Christie‘s New York will offer for sale Jackson Pollock’s masterpiece “Number 5 ( Elegant Lady , 1951)” from the E.ON art collection (estimate: $15 – 20 million).]]>
March 24, 2014, source: Christie‘s
The sale of “Number 5 (Elegant Lady, 1951)” offers the rare opportunity for collectors to acquire a late Jackson Pollock masterpiece with exceptional provenance. This work has been owned by two legendary dealers from both sides of the Atlantic –the celebrated New York dealer Martha Jackson and one of the most powerful gallerists of Post-War Germany Alfred Schmela.
“It‘s an honor for Christie‘s to support E.ON to continue pursuing its outstanding dedication to the arts by facilitating this sale“, commented Robert Manley, International Director of Post-War and Contemporary Art New York and Herrad Schorn, Director of Post-War and Contemporary Art Düsseldorf. “We do not part with ‘Number 5 (Elegant Lady , 1951)’ easily, but this sale will allow us to secure E.ON‘s engagement with art and culture for years to come“, explained Dr. Johannes Teyssen, CEO E.ON SE and Dorothee Gräfin von Posadowsky-Wehner, Head of Arts & Culture E.ON SE.
In the months prior to 1951, Pollock began to work on a series of drawings using black enamel dripped directly onto his chosen support. Following his radical intervention into the artistic canon with his iconic “drip” paintings, this return to his earlier interest in automatic drawing provided the artist with a new approach to the drip. In works such as “Number 5 (Elegant Lady, 1951)”, Pollock reduced its means to the bare minimum: colors are expelled in favor of black, and lines are used sparsely. Although not properly figurative, these paintings began to move away from the abstract, atmospheric feeling of the drip paintings, in which lines, colors and space fuse into wholeness.
Following its exhibition debut at Martha Jackson Gallery in 1956 “Number 5 (Elegant Lady, 1951)” was included in a number of early museum exhibitions for the artist, including the influential “New Images of Man” show curated by Peter Selz at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1959. In his essay for the exhibition catalogue, Frank O‘Hara extolled the virtues of Pollock‘s work, particularly its originality and richness: “One of the dramas of these paintings is the intolerable conflict between an artistic intent of unerring articulateness and a medium which is seeking to devour its meaning. In the traditional sense, there is no surface, as there is no color. There is simply the hand of the artist, in mid-air, awaiting the confirmation of form“.
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Jackson Pollock’s “Number 19, 1948” sells for $58,363,750 (Christie’s, May 2013)
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