Perhaps reflecting the horrors of the war from the previous years, or even his own struggles with his father in a strict Catholic household in Dublin, Bacon replaces the stately stare of the Supreme Pontiff with a grimace of pain and suffering. His source was provided by a film still of a screaming female character wearing a shattered pince-nez at the moment of her death in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 movie The Battleship Potemkin, which hung on the wall of his studio.

Study for a Head is further distinguished as one of the first works by Bacon to enter a private American collection, having first been acquired by the collector, art critic and biographer of Jackson Pollock, Bernard H. Friedman in 1952 – predating the artist’s first solo exhibition outside of England, which was held at Durlacher Brothers in New York in 1953. American interest for Bacon’s work undoubtedly began in the most spectacular of fashions, with his Painting 1946 being acquired by Alfred H. Barr, Jr. for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Today, American institutions represent the highest ownership of paintings completed by the artist from 1948–59.

IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART EVENING SALE 14 MAY 2019
Le Couple was one of the very first sculptures Alberto Giacometti exhibited, shown alongside the work of Constatin Brancusi and Ossip Zadkine in the Salon des Tuileries of 1927 (estimate $900,000/1.5 million). The work is a powerful totemic evocation of the subjects that would dominate Giacometti’s work for his entire career: the male and female standing figure.

The artist and his brother, Diego, had recently moved to a new Paris studio on the rue-Hippolyte-Maindron, where they would remain for the rest of their lives. In that new studio, Giacometti surrounded himself with imagery and objects that he distilled into this essential vision. A photograph from 1927 shows the artist seated at a small table with photographs and drawings tacked up on the wall around him. To his right proudly stands a Bakota Reliquary figure – whose structure bears a striking resemblance to the female figure in Le Couple – that he purchased from the Swiss avant-garde artist and noted collector of African art, Serge Brignoni.

The present work represents the first cast of Le Couple ever to appear at auction.

CONTEMPORARY ART DAY SALE 17 MAY 2019
An outstanding group of 11 works from the Lang Collection will highlight Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Day Auction. From an early Surrealist drawing by Robert Motherwell, to a Hans Hofmann painting that Walter Darby Bannard pronounced one of the artist’s best late works, the selection of Abstract Expressionist works from the collection features exceptional and rare gems that are, in almost every case, the best of their type.

The Langs collected many artists in depth. Their first important purchase was a work by Franz Kline — Untitled No. 11, which they acquired in 1970 — and the Day Auction includes an encyclopedic overview of the artist’s work. The survey begins with Untitled, an early depiction of pigeons painted by Kline in 1945 that once belonged to the artist’s brother Jacques (estimate $15/20,000). In a wonderful scene, the birds are outlined in a dark black line that anticipates Kline’s best known works. Chronologically the work is followed by the ink drawing Untitled from 1949 (estimate $50/70,000), a 1950 Untitled painting executed on the page of a telephone book (estimate $30/40,000), and an Untitled ink and pastel from 1951 (estimate $30/50,000).

It was in 1948 that Kline had a now-famous conversation with Willem de Kooning, who had the idea that Kline should project images of his sketches onto the wall of his studio – this ultimately inspired the large-scale black and white abstracts first shown at Egan gallery in 1950. One of the highlights of the Kline works on offer from the Lang Collection is a large-scale Untitled oil on paper from 1957 (estimate $200/300,000).

Hans Hofmann’s View from the Balcony from 1964 was featured on the cover of the catalogue for the 1972 show of his work at André Emmerich Gallery (estimate $500/700,000). The large and impressive canvas was also included in the artist’s 85th anniversary show at the Kootz Gallery in 1964, as well as Hoffman’s 1976 retrospective of the artist’s work organized by the Hirschhorn Gallery in Washington, D.C. In the catalogue for that retrospective, Walter Danby declared the present painting to be one of the artist’s finest late works.

Figure with Red Hair from 1967 is a prime example of Willem de Kooning’s interest in depicting female portraits and blending them with their surroundings, and anticipates his great 1970s abstracts (estimate $350/450,000). Painted with the same vigor and luscious use of paint, Figure with Red Hair was included in the important 1990 exhibition Abstract Expressionism: Other Dimensions at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Adolph Gottlieb’s painted his pictograph Evil Eye in 1946 (estimate $120/180,000). Beginning with a work called the Eye of Oedipus from 1941, Gottlieb began his series know as Pictographs which continued throughout the 1940s. They were devised of a grid-structure with various elements and symbols drawn from African, Oceanic and Native American Art. The titles alluded to mythology, mysticism and alchemy. Evil Eye is a prime example of the group, and once belonged to Karl Nierendorf – Gottlieb’s first dealer and champion.