Jackson Pollock Drip Painting Expected to Fetch $45 M. at Christie’s – ARTnews.com

Christie’s has unveiled an summary painting by Jackson Pollock featuring the postwar painter’s signature ‘drip’ style that will be auctioned future month. Variety 31 (1949) will hit the block in the course of an night sale in New York on May possibly 12 dedicated to artwork developed in the 20th century. It is predicted to fetch a price in excess of $45 million and will be made available with no a assurance.

Pollock concluded the work, which stands at 31-by-22-inches, in 1949, throughout a formative time in his profession when he developed a sequence of drip paintings. The is effective would make him a regular bearer of abstract expressionism and derive from a interval that commands the artist’s leading auction rates.

The current large amount was bundled in retrospectives committed to Pollock in 1967 and once more in 1998 both at the Museum of Modern day Artwork in New York.

The very last get the job done by Pollock of this caliber to sell at auction was Amount 17 (1951), a black abstraction painted in excess of a tan canvas that arrived from the vaunted selection of real estate magnate Harry Macklowe and his ex-spouse, Linda, next a contentious divorce demo. It fetched a new file for the artist at $61.2 million in its to start with visual appeal at auction.

If the current function reaches its superior estimate, it will be among the the best 4 functions by the artist offered at auction.

This is not the very first time the operate has appeared in a public sale. The do the job very last appeared at auction extra than 30 many years ago in May 1988 at Christie’s, in which it marketed for $3.5 million.

The painting will go on view at Christie’s Los Angeles outpost this week ahead of returning to New York, wherever it will be shown forward of the sale on May perhaps 12.