New York – Following the successful inaugural collection sale in May 2022, Christie’s is thrilled to announce a group of 26 contemporary masterworks from The Collection of Thomas and Doris Ammann that will be sold during the Fall Marquee Week in the 20th and 21st Century Evening Sales and the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale on Thursday, 17 November and Friday, 18 November at Rockefeller Center. The group features works by leading names of post-war and contemporary art including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Ryman, Brice Marden and Francesco Clemente. All proceeds of the collection will benefit the Thomas
and Doris Ammann Foundation Zurich, which is dedicated to improving the lives of children all over the world by supporting organizations and institutions centered on providing healthcare and educational programs.
Among the exemplary highlights that will be offered in the 20th Century Evening Sale is Robert Ryman’s Untitled [Winsor] ($6,000,000-8,000,000), which demonstrates the artist’s rigorous and intellectual interrogation of the painterly process. Painted in 1966, when the artist was refining his disciplined approach to the structure of painting, Ryman reduced his canvases to their most essential elements: paint and support. Rejecting traditional ideas of paint acting as a signifier, he removed all traces of color to leave a surface that focuses on the inherent physical qualities of his materials – texture, density, light and reflectivity. Constructed of short strokes applied with supple ease and fluidity, they are typical in his works from this period in which he investigated the various aesthetic effects of different types of brushes and lengths of strokes. Ryman was one of the Ammann’s favorite artists, and an example of the painters they privately collected in depth.
Surface also played a pivotal role in the work of Brice Marden, as seen in his 2017 canvas, Free Painting 2 ($4,000,000-6,000,000) another highlight of the 20th Century Evening Sale. Its minimalist appearance belies the tender, hand-made quality of the artist’s paintings, and the subtle, time-consuming nature of their creation. In this work, we can see both, demonstrated in the highly finished blocks of color that dominate the upper portion of the canvas, and the delicate drips and painterly trails that occupy the lower section.