Willem de Kooning’s ‘Collage’ Heads to Sotheby’s
Constructed using paper cutouts and thumbtacks, the painting is part of a $100 million trove of works that belonged to David Solinger, former president of the Whitney Museum.
Willem de Kooning, Collage (1950). Oil on lacquer on paper with thumbtacks. Estimate: US $18–25 million. Courtesy Sotheby's.
Sotheby's will offer 90 works from the David M. Solinger Collection in a series of sales in New York and Paris from 14 November to 6 December.
The top lot is Willem de Kooning's Collage (1950), a work that was not just painted, but cut, traced, spun, and pinned. De Kooning often used these techniques to experiment with different shapes before committing them to the canvas, but with Collage he made the unusual move of incorporating the painted pieces of paper and the thumbtacks used to hold them in place as part of the final composition.
'There is a power in de Kooning's work. A passion. A vitality. A sense of exploration that are some of the earmarks of a great painting,' Solinger said in an interview.
Solinger (1906–1996) was a successful attorney who decided to take art classes with a friend who had just returned from World War II.
'Painting wakes you up,' he once said, according to The New York Times. 'Lawyers need this relaxation. Law is precise, it doesn't give the imagination much sway. That's where painting comes in.'
Solinger began visiting galleries and museums. He was elected a trustee of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1961, and became its president in 1966. He led the drive to purchase the site on Madison Avenue where the iconic grey granite building designed by Marcel Breuer served as the museum's home until 2014.
Other highlights of Solinger's collection heading to auction include Alberto Giacometti's Trois hommes qui marchent (Grand plateau) (conceived in 1949 and cast in 1952), Pablo Picasso's Femme dans un fauteuil (1927), and works by Paul Klee, Joan Miró, and Jean Dubuffet.
Describing the Giacometti, Solinger said, 'There's an energy in those figures. If one comes to earth thousands of years from now and sees this sculpture, he'll get some of the feeling of energy, the rush of city people.'
Solinger did the vast majority of his collecting in the 1950s, making it something of a time capsule.
'What gives this collection particular flavour and coherence is its focus on the community of transatlantic styles, circa 1950, that mark its core,' wrote art historian Robert Rosenblum. —[O]
