Abstract Jackson Pollock Painting From The 1940s Could Go For $45M At Auction
By Alexa Heah, 21 Apr 2022
Next month, auction house Christie’s will be holding its 20th Century Evening Sale at Rockefeller Plaza, and for those in attendance, the star of the show will no doubt be Jackson Pollock’s Number 31 painting, an abstract “drip” piece that’s estimated to fetch over US$45 million on the night.
According to the auction house, this work has featured in numerous seminal exhibitions, including the 1967 Jackson Pollock MoMA retrospective, and the later 1998 retrospective at MoMA and The Tate.
Completed at the end of 1949, the painting was first exhibited by Pollock’s dealer Betty Parsons, where it’s believed that critics lauded it as “the best painting he has yet done.”
In total, the maestro only created 13 of such “drip” paintings, mounting the paper onto Masonite, composition board, or canvas. Even more special, only eight of the works use the same metallic paint featured in Number 31, touted as one of the most opulent of all.
“In the late 1940s, Pollock’s drip paintings categorically redefined how we understand art. This moment saw the art world’s center of gravity shift for the first time away from the museums and galleries of Paris and into the streets of New York,” explained Alex Rotter, Christie’s Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art.
“True drip paintings were—and still are—the ultimate in mid-century American avant-garde, and are rare to come across in the secondary market. Number 31 is a superb example. … It stands as a brilliant demonstration of Pollock’s rigor and effusiveness,” he added.
Number 31 will be up on display at Christie’s Los Angeles from April 19 to April 22, before it returns to New York ahead of the sale on May 12, 2022.
[via Robb Report and Christie’s, cover image via Christie’s]