Sotheby’s to Offer Three Paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe To Benefit the Acquisitions Fund of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Highlighting Sotheby’s Auctions of CONTEMPORARY ART AND AMERICAN ART This November in New York

A Street A Rare Painting from O’Keeffe’s Powerful Series of New York Cityscapes Estimate $12/18 Million **

Calla Lilies on Red An Arresting Depiction of the Artist’s Most Emblematic Subject Estimate $8/12 Million **

Cottonwood Tree in Spring A Testament to the Deep Inspiration O’Keeffe Found in The American Southwest Estimate $1.5/2.5 Million

Following Sotheby’s May 2014 Auction of Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 On Behalf of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Which Established the World Auction Record for Any Work by a Female Artist

NEW YORK, 16 October 2018 – Four years following our sale of Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic flower painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, Sotheby’s is honored to announce that we will again offer important works by the artist from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico to benefit its Acquisitions Fund.

On 14 November, Sotheby’s will present works by O’Keeffe in a Contemporary Art Evening Auction for the first time: A Street from 1926, one of the most psychologically penetrating paintings from the artist’s rare and distinguished series of New York cityscapes (estimate $12/18 million), and Calla Lilies on Red from 1928, a vibrant depiction of the flower with which O’Keeffe would become synonymous (estimate $8/12 million). Our American Art Auction on 16 November will feature Cottonwood Tree in Spring from 1943, which reveals the profound inspiration O’Keeffe gleaned from the American Southwest (estimate $1.5/2.5 million).

All three paintings are on public view this week in Sotheby’s Los Angeles galleries (16 & 17 October) and at SITE131 in Dallas’s Design District (19 October), as part of our tour of highlights from our marquee fall auctions. The full Contemporary Art and American Art sales will open for exhibition in Sotheby’s New York galleries on 2 November.

Robert A. Kret, Director of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, said: “Museum leadership, with the endorsements of the donors and Board of Trustees, selected these works to de-accession after very careful and thoughtful consideration. Removing an artwork from the collection is never an easy thing for any museum to do, but it is an integral part of good collections management to continually build and refine our holdings.”

Cody Hartley, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s Senior Director, Collections and Interpretation, said: “A Street, Calla Lilies on Red, and Cottonwood Tree in Spring represent some of O’Keeffe’s most beloved subjects. They are bold, strong, wonderful paintings that epitomize everything that made Georgia O’Keeffe a master of American Modernism.”

Grégoire Billault, Head of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Department in New York, said: “Georgia O’Keeffe remains one of the most singular artistic voices of the last century – nothing looks like an O’Keeffe – and the diversity of this particular group of paintings touches upon the breadth and depth of her iconic career. Her images are not only an essential part of American culture, but are now appreciated on an international stage among the great works of her time. We are thrilled to present these superb paintings in a new and wider context this November, sparking dialogues between O’Keeffe’s work and that of artists spanning the 20th and 21st centuries. It is a great privilege for Sotheby’s to work with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum again this fall.”

In May 2014, Sotheby’s sold Georgia O’Keeffe’s iconic flower painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 to benefit the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s Acquisitions Fund. The painting achieved a remarkable $44.4 million, setting a world auction record for any work by a female artist that still stands today. Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 now resides in the collection of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and was the star of the blockbuster retrospective Georgia O’Keeffe at the Tate Modern and Art Gallery of Ontario in 2016–17.

CONTEMPORARY ART EVENING AUCTION 14 November 2018

Georgia O’Keeffe A Street 1926 Oil on canvas 48 ⅛ by 29 ⅞ inches Estimate $12/18 million

Painted In 1926, A Street is one of the most physically imposing and psychologically penetrating works from the distinguished series of New York cityscapes that Georgia O’Keeffe created between 1925 and 1929. Critics now regard this small but powerful series of some 20 works as standing among the most satisfying, painterly, and memorable of her career. The cityscapes stand as both a personal and universal expression of the ambivalence of urban existence – the simultaneous glorification and condemnation of the overwhelming human and mechanical energy of a city.

O’Keeffe began her New York life in 1918. Following her marriage to the influential photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz in 1924, the couple moved to an apartment building on East 58th Street. It was here that O’Keeffe began her fascination with the skyscraper, observing the construction of the Shelton Hotel at Lexington Avenue and 49th Street in Midtown Manhattan – a building the couple moved into in 1925. The identifiable buildings from her subsequent cityscapes were all found within walking distance of the Shelton, which the artist often presented as simplified masses – isolated icons of New York’s unique modernity.