Abstraction
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“There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.”
Helen Frankenthaler
Elberta
1975
acrylic on canvas
79 x 97 in.
Price realised
USD 4,285,000
774845372804857856
“I am primarily painting from photographs these days (from illustrated magazines but also from family photos), in a sense this is a stylistic problem, the form is naturalistic, even though the photograph is not nature at all but a prefabricated product (the “second-hand world” in which we live), I do not have to intervene artistically with style, since the stylization (deformation in form and color) contributes only under very particular circumstances toward clarifying and intensifying an object or a subject (generally stylization becomes the central problem which obscures everything else (object, subject), it leads to an unmotivated artificiality, an untouchable formalist taboo.”
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild
signed, inscribed and dated ‘809-4 Richter 1994’ (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
88 5⁄8 x 78 3⁄4 in. (225 x 200 cm.)
Painted in 1994.
Price realised
USD 38,175,000
773831054682357760
“Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.”
Jackson Pollock
Number 28, 1949
signed and dated ‘Jackson Pollock 49’ (lower left)
enamel on canvas mounted on Masonite
12 7/8 x 13 in. (32.5 x 33 cm.)
Painted in 1949.
Price realised
USD 6,705,000
772870564233822208
“It’s instinctive in a certain kind of painting…It’s like a nervous system. It’s not described, it’s happening. The feeling is going on with the task. The line is the feeling, from a soft thing, a dreamy thing, to something hard, something arid, something lonely, something ending, something beginning.” — Cy Twombly
Cy Twombly (1928-2011)
Untitled
signed and dated ‘Cy Twombly 1970’ (on the reverse)
oil based house paint and wax crayon on canvas
61 ¼ x 74 ¾ in. (155.5 x 190 cm.)
Executed in 1970.
Price realised
USD 69,605,000
768464722471305216
“In stating that Abstract Art died of acute boredom, I meant boredom on the part of both public and artist. The public got bored because these things meant nothing to them, and they only went to see them in the first instance because they made them laugh. After a bit they became a stale joke. The artists’ boredom was of a more complicated order. I will endeavor to explain it.”
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“Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.” — Jackson Pollock
Number 19, 1948
1948
oil and enamel on paper mounted on canvas
30 7/8 x 22 5/8 in.
Price realised
USD 58,363,750
748222843730460672
“The modern artist is working with space and time and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.”
— Jackson Pollock