Mark Rothko – Brown and Blacks in Reds 1957.
Art by the titans of American Abstract Expressionism – Franz Klein, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – from the collection of dealer and financier Robert Mnuchin could make more than $130 million at a dedicated evening auction by Sotheby’s in New York on May 14.
Led by Rothko’s monumental 1957 canvas Brown and Black in Reds a total of 24 works from the collection will be offered in the standalone sale.
Mnuchin, who died aged 92 last December, loved going to auctions where he was known for shouting out his bids. A New Yorker who graduated from Yale in 1955, he served in the US Army and joined Goldman Sachs in 1957. After a 33 year career there he retired at 56 to pursue a career in art and became a legendary dealer.
Franz Kline – Harleman 1960.
The deeply personal collection, assembled with his wife Adriana over the decades, demonstrated a devotion to pursuing works they loved and wanted to live with. This embodies a collecting ethos mirrored by many art lovers. “The reason to buy art is because you love it, you love it, you love it”, Mnuchin said. Sotheby’s say the examples he chose for his own collection demonstrate “extreme connoisseurship”.
Standing nearly eight feet tall Rothko’s Brown and Blacks in Red ($70-$100 million)(€60.6-€86.6 million) dates to 1957. From the artist’s seminal decade when he developed the signature bands of colour it has been in some of the most important exhibitions dedicated to Rothko including the celebrated show at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2023-24.
Acquired by Seagrams around 1957 it has been in the Mnuchin collection for more than two decades. The palette was an important influence in the development of the Seagram Murals commissioned for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram building in New York in the years to follow. The renowned murals, found today in galleries like the Tate in London and Washington’s National Gallery of Art, showed Rothko’s commitment to expressing basic human emotions like tragedy, ecstasy and doom.
An early transitional Rothko, No. 1 1949 ($15-$20 million)(€13-€17.3 million), stands at the threshold of his breakthrough and was included in the famous 1950 exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery.
Mnuchin ranked Willem de Kooning among his most revered artists. The selection on offer in May – led by an example of his late lyrical style Untitled XLII from 1983 – presents a retrospective encapsulation of de Kooning’s career featuring works spanning four decades from the 1950’s through the 1980’s.
Harleman is the finest work by Franz Kline to come to auction in over a decade. This monumental example of his black and white paintings dates to 1960.
Mnuchin was an early supporter of Jeff Koons. Louis XIV is an icon of the artists statuary series and ranks among his most important early works. This example is the artist’s proof from an edition of 3, plus one artist’s proof. The rest of the editions are held in museum collections, including the Nasher Sculpture Center, The Broad, and the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art.
Robert and Adriana Mnuchin were drawn to works that represent defining moments in the career of an artist. As New York collectors of thier time they were in a unique position to champion some of the most innovative and celebrated artists of the second half of the 20th century.
Jeff Koons – Louis XIV 1986.
