Alongside a monumental Jean Dubuffet painting, Phillips will auction works by Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, Tamara de Lempicka, Mark Tansey, Andy Warhol, John Currin, and Mickalene Thomas in its upcoming 20th century art evening sale in London on April 15.
Among the postwar works headed to auction is Rothko’s Untitled (Black Blue Painting), completed in 1968, at the apex of his career, which will be offered at a price of £2.5 million–£3.5 million ($3.5 million–$4.5 million). It will be sold alongside Stella’s vibrant painting Scramble, Ascending Spectrum/Ascending Green Values (1977), from his “Concentric Square” series, which is estimated at a price of £2.5 million–£3.5 million ($3 million–$4 million). An Art Deco portrait of a woman by Tamara de Lempicka titled Figure esquissée sur fond doré, painted ca. 1930, is estimated at £1.5 million ($1 million).
Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q, a 1964 riff on the Mona Lisa from an edition of 35 divided between the artist and his close friends, is estimated at £200,000–£300,000 ($277,000–$415,000). Other versions of it reside in the collections of institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, the Staatliches Museum Schwerin, and the Israel Museum of Art in Jerusalem.
Among the emerging artists in the sale is Joy Labinjo, whose untitled double-portrait of a woman and child from 2018 is estimated at £20,000–£30,000 ($27,000–$42,000). Labinjo’s market has ascended since the sale of her family scene Visiting Great Grandma (2018), which was auctioned for $189,000 this past December at Phillips; it had been estimated at $10,000. Meanwhile, Mickalene Thomas’s Clarivel Right (2018), featuring a recurring female figure in her work, is estimated at £220,000–£350,000 ($305,000–$457,000).
