Masterpieces from the S.I. Newhouse Collection
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Event date 18 MAY 2026 -
Event location New York
Following sales in 2019 and 2023, the latest selection offers a rare glimpse into the most personal chapter of his collection. Bringing together 16 masterpieces led by Jackson Pollock and Constantin Brancusi, among works by Jasper Johns and Pablo Picasso, it traces the watershed moments of 20th-century art. Together, the works reveal the incomparable vision that made Mr Newhouse one of the great collectors of his time. This May, Masterpieces: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse opens our 20th and 21st Century Art auctions in New York.
JACKSON POLLOCK (1912-1956)
Number 7A, 1948
Number 7A, 1948
Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A, 1948 resulted in a seismic shift in the history of art. By releasing the canvas from the constraints of the easel, placing it directly on the floor of his studio, and applying paint by dripping, pouring, and flicking the pigment with careful movements of his hand, Pollock ushered in an entirely new visual language.
Art had entered the public realm. No longer the preserve of museums and academies, Pollock brought art to the masses and started a conversation in which everyone could take part. Number 7A, 1948 represents the reinvention of painting, opening the door to a pure form of expression suitable for the modern postwar world.
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CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI (1876-1957)
Danaïde, 1913
Danaïde, 1913
This icon of modern art ushered in a new era of sculpture in the twentieth century. With its radical formal simplicity, graceful refinement, and compelling presence, Danaïde is among the finest of the artist’s groundbreaking works, remaining as transportive and entrancing today as it was when it was conceived around 1913.
Danaïde was inspired by a young art student called Margit Pogany whom Brancusi met in Paris in 1910. He transformed her features into a series of forms that resonate with a sense of purity and timelessness. For Brancusi, this was the aim of his sculpture. He wanted to dispense with surface detail and instead harness a deeper, more elemental sense of harmony and beauty. As he stated: “Simplicity is complexity resolved.”
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Highlights
