Police Gazette
| Police Gazette |
|---|
| Willem de Kooning , 1955 |
| Oil, enamel paint and charcoal on canvas |
| 110 x 127.5 cm |
| Private collection
Link to the picture |
Police Gazette is an abstract painting by the American painter Willem de Kooning from 1955. In literature and the press, this picture is usually referred to as a landscape painting.
At an auction at Christie's on October 11, 2006, Police Gazette was sold for $ 63.5 million. After Woman III , which was acquired by the same buyer in November 2006 for $ 137.5 million, this is the second highest price paid for a de Kooning painting to date.
history
De Kooning sold the picture while still in New York to his then gallery owner Sidney Janis , who resold it to the art dealer and graphic collector Eugene Thaw (* 1927). Thaw sold the painting to collectors Robert and Ethel Skull. In 1973 the picture was offered at Sotheby’s and bought by the Basel art collector Ernst Beyeler for 180,000 dollars, which at that time meant a record price for both a de Kooning and a picture by a living American artist. The painting then came into the possession of Stephen A. Wynn , a billionaire casino owner and art collector from Las Vegas at an unknown date . In the late 1990s the picture came into the collection of David Geffen , who acquired the picture from Wynn through the agency of the Richard Gray Gallery in New York together with Roy Lichtenstein's "Torpedo ... LOS" (1963). 2008 David Geffen sold privately the image de Kooning along with False Start by Jasper Johns for a total of 143.5 million US dollars.
In contrast to the works of art auctioned off, there is no evidence for pictures that have been sold privately at supposedly high prices, as buyers often want to remain secret and auction houses are not obliged to disclose private purchases.
description
The rather small-format, almost square picture is dominated by the colors yellow and red, with white, light and dark blue, green and pale pink in a few places. The composition, which is reminiscent of a patchwork quilt or an aerial photograph of a landscape, has probably categorized the picture as a landscape picture. The individual impasto paint stains, which are more or less roughly outlined with charcoal, are applied with violent brushstrokes.
In addition to conventional oil paint and charcoal, De Kooning also used enamel paint , which was popular with many of his artist colleagues at the time , an oil-based paint that dries quickly and gives the picture a hard, high-gloss surface that is insensitive to injury.
Web links
- Carol Vogel: Works by Johns and de Kooning Sell for $ 143.5 million The New York Times, October 12, 2006
- Art and Millions Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from October 31, 2006
Individual evidence
- ↑ Donald Kuspit: Art Values or Money Values? accessed on May 11, 2015.
- ^ William Grimes: Ernst Beyeler, Top Dealer of Modern Art, Dies at 88. In: The New York Times. February 26, 2010. [1]
- ^ Carol Vogel: Works by Johns and de Kooning Sell for $ 143.5 million. In: The New York Times. October 12, 2008. [2]