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Lot Essay
Title issues among those listed in the provenance have been amicably resolved pursuant to a Confidential Settlement Agreement. Full and clear title shall pass to any new buyer.
Although de Kooning had experimented with three-dimensional forms as early as the 1930s, his true journey into sculpture began in 1969 while on a two-month trip to Italy. He had travelled to Europe to participate in the Festival of the Two Worlds, a music and art event held in Spoleto, and spent much of his time in Rome, soaking up the atmosphere of the Eternal City. It was here that one day, while sitting in a local café, he was reunited with Herzl Emanuel, a sculptor friend from New York who had moved to Rome several years earlier. Emanuel invited de Kooning to his studio, which, together with its basic foundry, enthused de Kooning: he immediately began molding small pieces of clay into rudimentary figures, as Emanuel later recalled. “He was totally enthralled by the whole ambience,” he said “and expressed a very strong desire to ‘play’ with some clay. He spent the following month working in a small studio that I kept in the rear of the foundry, during which he produced 13 or 14 small sketches, which I cast for him in bronze” (H. Emanuel, quoted in J. Zilczer, op. cit., p. 196).
Throughout this sojourn, de Kooning produced thirteen small figures in clay, which were editioned in bronze as part of the Untitled series. The present work, Untitled V, stands out as a preeminent example from this series: less abstract in form than others, its undeniable reference to figuration anticipates the larger and most accomplished work from the artist’s sculptural oeuvre: Clamdigger, which de Kooning created three years after the present work, in 1972. One of just twenty-five works of sculpture that the artist created during a short period between 1969 and 1974, Untitled V confirms de Kooning’s membership to a distinguished group of artists who made the successful transition from painting to produce works of sculpture, their creative prowess able to cross the restrictive boundaries of medium and allow their ingenuity to remain unrestrained.
Although de Kooning had experimented with three-dimensional forms as early as the 1930s, his true journey into sculpture began in 1969 while on a two-month trip to Italy. He had travelled to Europe to participate in the Festival of the Two Worlds, a music and art event held in Spoleto, and spent much of his time in Rome, soaking up the atmosphere of the Eternal City. It was here that one day, while sitting in a local café, he was reunited with Herzl Emanuel, a sculptor friend from New York who had moved to Rome several years earlier. Emanuel invited de Kooning to his studio, which, together with its basic foundry, enthused de Kooning: he immediately began molding small pieces of clay into rudimentary figures, as Emanuel later recalled. “He was totally enthralled by the whole ambience,” he said “and expressed a very strong desire to ‘play’ with some clay. He spent the following month working in a small studio that I kept in the rear of the foundry, during which he produced 13 or 14 small sketches, which I cast for him in bronze” (H. Emanuel, quoted in J. Zilczer, op. cit., p. 196).
Throughout this sojourn, de Kooning produced thirteen small figures in clay, which were editioned in bronze as part of the Untitled series. The present work, Untitled V, stands out as a preeminent example from this series: less abstract in form than others, its undeniable reference to figuration anticipates the larger and most accomplished work from the artist’s sculptural oeuvre: Clamdigger, which de Kooning created three years after the present work, in 1972. One of just twenty-five works of sculpture that the artist created during a short period between 1969 and 1974, Untitled V confirms de Kooning’s membership to a distinguished group of artists who made the successful transition from painting to produce works of sculpture, their creative prowess able to cross the restrictive boundaries of medium and allow their ingenuity to remain unrestrained.