The Wall Street Journal wants to play up the tangential connection between Jackson Pollock’s painting which will be auctioned at Christie’s this Spring and the painters death in a car crash. The painting in question was one of two that Pollock traded for the car he was killed in:

On May 13, Christie’s will offer up one of the canvases connected to that macabre trade, 1951’s “Number 5 (Elegant Lady),” at its New York evening sale of postwar and contemporary art. When Pollock got the car, similar models were selling new for around $3,000. Christie’s said its price tag for “Number 5” will be $15 million to $20 million. […]

The seller of “Number 5” isE.ONCorp., an energy company based in Düsseldorf, Germany, that has owned the work since 1980. For the next few decades, the Pollock hung in conference rooms, and workers were never told about its history, said Dorothee Gräfin von Posadowsky-Wehner, the head of E.ON’s arts and culture program. Even she only learned of the painting’s sad back story after the company decided to sell it to keep funding a local museum. “I thought, ‘My God, how tragic,'” she added. “But it’s also strange because you don’t see death in the actual painting. Only life.”

At Auction Soon: A Pollock With a Macabre Backstory (WSJ.com)