Sotheby’s announces a massive 70 x 80 inch work from 1975’s Xavier Fourcade show will be part of their Evening sale of Contemporary art:

On 13 November 2013 Sotheby’s New York will present Untitled V by Willem de Kooning as a major highlight of the Contemporary Art Evening Sale. The work dates from the critical year of 1975 and is the prime example from the watershed period when de Kooning returned to painting after a period in which he focused on sculpture. Having not been seen in public since 1980, Untitled V goes on view for the first time in over 30 years in London on 12 October before the pre-sale exhibition in New York opens on 31 October. The work is estimated to fetch $25/35 million.

Untitled V was part of a group of work which marked a return of the artist to oil painting in 1975. In that critical year he produced a highly renowned series of canvases of explosive colour in just six months which made up the exhibition De Kooning: New Works: Paintings and Sculpture at the Fourcade, Droll gallery in New York. As his dealer, Xavier Fourcade had the pick of the artist’s work….