Günther Förg, ‘Untitled.’ Wright image.
CHICAGO – Wright will open its 2014 auction season with “Art + Design” on Feb. 27, beginning at noon Central. The auction will feature 200 lots with estimates ranging from $1,000-$1,500 to $200,000-$300,000. LiveAuctioneers.com will facilitate Internet live bidding.
Artists represented in the sale include some of the best-known names in postwar and contemporary art, such as Milton Avery, John Baldessari, Ellsworth Kelly, Takashi Murakami and Ray Johnson. Artist-designed furniture includes a library desk by Donald Judd (estimate: $7,000-$9,000) and a pair of chairs from Pharmacy, London designed by Jasper Morrison and Damien Hirst (estimate: $2,000-$3,000).
Notable in the sale is a selection of works by Günther Förg from the collection of Thomas and Linda Heagy. A prominent figure in the European art community until his recent death in December 2013, Förg’s expansive oeuvre includes paintings, sculpture and photography. Complex, intellectual and difficult to unpack, Förg’s works defy categorization. His dispersion of styles results in an engagement with the forms of modernism without fully embracing them.
Particularly outstanding in the sale are two untitled works that are exemplary of Förg’s reductivist approach to painting (Estimates: $30,000-$40,000 each).
“The paintings in our sale are demonstrative of Forg’s engagement with the modernist abstraction. The impressive scale and seductive color combinations belie the simple formal compositions often repeated by the artist,” said Rowley Kennerk, Wright’s fine art specialist.
Portrait of Willem de Kooning by Marisol is another especially excellent work of art featured in Art + Design (estimate: $200,000-$300,000). This homage to Willem de Kooning, who Marisol first met in the 1950s, characterizes the unique expressiveness of Marisol’s sculptures. Portrait of Willem de Kooning (1980) was created in the four-year period between 1977 and 1981 during which Marisol created a series of portrait sculptures featuring various art world personalities. The subsequent works were featured in “Artists and Artistes,” first exhibited at the Sidney Janis Gallery, New York in 1981.
ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE
Günther Förg, ‘Untitled.’ Wright image. ‘Portrait of Willem de Kooning’ by Marisol. Wright image. ‘Young Mother’ by Milton Avery. Wright image. Donald Judd, set of six chairs. Wright image.
