Earlier this week, the New York Times revealed that Frank Stella is doing a little house cleaning through various Christie’s sales. The estimates aren’t available on all of the works but the list below suggests the works are worth close to $10m on the low end. Stella isn’t afraid to sell his own works like WWRL, above, through Christie’s. And he isn’t being shy about his reasons:
Mr. Stella has decidedly catholic taste in art, further evidenced by the works he is selling at Christie’s, including an untitled 1927 Miró oil being auctioned in London on Feb. 27 and David Hockney’s “A Realistic Still Life” (1965), up for auction on March 6. In New York in May he is selling a double portrait of a couple by the Dutch painter Jan Sanders van Hemessen (1532); two of his own works, “WWRL” (1967) and “Lettre sur les Aveugles I” (1974); and Helen Frankenthaler’s “The Beach Horse” (1959). Estimates for those works range from $1.5 million to $7.5 million.
Why sell? “It’s nice to have some liquidity,” Mr. Stella said. “You don’t want to save everything for the end. I won’t be around forever.”
