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Lot Essay
‘A lot of it belongs to the tradition of gestures. I get a lot from looking at dance’ (Alex Katz)
Painted in 1990, Study for Chance is an exuberant group portrait by Alex Katz. The painting’s three sitters are Anne Lyon, Vivien Bittencourt and Darinka Chase, each of whom was known personally to the artist; the latter two women remain part of Katz’s studio team to this day. Against a brilliant vermillion ground, the swimsuit-clad figures are depicted in a frieze-like arrangement. Drawing on a distinctly Pop aesthetic, each holds aloft a large, colourful beach ball, and their poses evoke the studied ease of fashion models. Acquired through gallerist Emilio Mazzoli the year following its execution, Study for Chance has been held in Alessandro Grassi’s collection for more than three decades.
From the centre of the composition, Vivien Bittencourt looks out coolly into the viewer’s space. Bittencourt is Katz’s daughter-in-law, and her form recurs often within his oeuvre across individual and group portraits. She features in his striking night-time family portrait Ada’s Garden (2000, Des Moines Art Center), and her closely-cropped visage dominates Black Hat 2 (2010), which graced the cover of the catalogue for Katz’s recent retrospective at the Albertina Museum, Vienna, in 2023. Shortly after sitting for the present work, Bittencourt and her husband Vincent filmed Katz in his New York studio, creating an intimate depiction of the artist’s practice. In the present work, Bittencourt is flanked by Lyons and Chase, each of whom look out beyond the edge of the picture plane. Both women also sat for Katz several times, and Chase has worked in Katz’s studio since the 1980s. ‘Posing for Alex is better than going to a French New Wave film; it’s like being in one,’ she later reflected. ‘I never thought of the finished works as portraits of me—just as great paintings’ (D. Chase quoted in C. Hochberger, ‘Do You Have What It Takes To Pose For A Masterpiece? Models Describe Sitting for Lucian Freud, Alex Katz, Kehinde Wiley, and Others’, Artspace, 29 June 2018).
Katz would develop the present work into one of his iconic cutouts, which first emerged in his practice in the late 1950s and with which Katz has depicted family, friends and acquaintances from New York’s social milieu across many decades. The cutouts transposed the clean lines and flat planes of unmodulated colour which define Katz’s painted works onto smooth, resistant surfaces of aluminium and steel. He is interested in the relations between people, how they style themselves within and against the society they inhabit, and his group portraits latch on to these details. The present work, capturing the cool cropped hairstyles and bold geometric swimsuits of 1990s tastemakers, reflects Katz’s enduring interest in fashion and style as modes of expression and markers of place and time.
Il Senso del Colore: Works from the Alessandro Grassi Collection
‘Colour has always had a great presence in my life, so much so that in the choice of the works colour itself, before anything else … is the dominant element’ (Alessandro Grassi)
Christie’s is honoured to present a selection of works from the Alessandro Grassi Collection, to be offered in sales across Paris and London in October 2025. This occasion marks a rare opportunity to acquire works from one of the most storied collections in Italy.
Alessandro Grassi (1942-2009) was born among colours. His chemist father was a founder of Colorama, a key producer of printing inks, and he would follow into this field, becoming a prominent industrialist in Milan. An elegant and sophisticated man, he began his collection in 1979 with the Transavanguardia: a group of Italian artists who embraced vivid colour, form and symbolism in reaction to the Conceptual and Minimal tendencies of the previous decade. ‘I’m anti-minimalist’, Grassi said. ‘Everything I bought was because it provoked a strong emotion in me at the time.’
Grassi soon became a leading Transavanguardia collector, and expanded into genres from Pop to Spatialism and Arte Povera. He forged close relationships with the eminent art historian Achille Bonito Oliva and the Modena-based gallerist Emilio Mazzoli, from whom he acquired many works, often from the artists’ inaugural exhibitions. He lived among them in an extraordinary art-filled apartment in Milan, documented in the 1993 volume Collezione privata. He lent generously to museum exhibitions, and left a significant bequest to Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto (MART) upon his death. More recently, the collection was celebrated in the 2018 exhibition Codice colore at the Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, the city of Grassi’s birth.
Italian art formed the core of the collection. Among the works offered are two paintings by Salvo, who plays with genre and fame in his Paessagio (1984) and 31 Siciliani (1976). Mario Schifano’s magnificent Grande quadro equestre italiano (1978) is another highlight. Widely reproduced—appearing on the cover of Flash Art, and in Schifano’s major retrospective of 2002—it is an exemplary work by the maverick postmodern painter, who drew upon urban experience and deconstructed art-historical tradition.
Elsewhere, Untitled (1989-1991), a rare collaborative tapestry by Mimmo Paladino and Alighiero Boetti, offers a meditation on the infinite, intertwined complexities of existence. Gino de Dominicis’s Untitled (1997-1998), with its red figure set amid a gleaming ground of silver, is a typically enigmatic vision from one of post-war Italy’s most mysterious artists. Grassi did not limit himself to any one medium or category, and developed an international outlook over the years. He was drawn to the bold visual language of Alex Katz, whose Kym 2 (1989-1990), Study for Chance (1990) and Sissel (2000) are among the standout works in this selection. They relate both to American Pop and to the Neo- Expressionist tendency that paralleled Italy’s Transavanguardia. Valley Curtain (project for Colorado) (1972), meanwhile, is a drawing for Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s installation which spanned a Colorado highway with bright orange fabric.
With an exacting eye for colour, mood and expressive power, Grassi assembled a remarkable collection that ranked among the finest in Italy. Together, the works offered paint a picture of the passion and personal feeling with which Grassi pursued his vision, and of the joy and vibrancy that art can bring to life.
Painted in 1990, Study for Chance is an exuberant group portrait by Alex Katz. The painting’s three sitters are Anne Lyon, Vivien Bittencourt and Darinka Chase, each of whom was known personally to the artist; the latter two women remain part of Katz’s studio team to this day. Against a brilliant vermillion ground, the swimsuit-clad figures are depicted in a frieze-like arrangement. Drawing on a distinctly Pop aesthetic, each holds aloft a large, colourful beach ball, and their poses evoke the studied ease of fashion models. Acquired through gallerist Emilio Mazzoli the year following its execution, Study for Chance has been held in Alessandro Grassi’s collection for more than three decades.
From the centre of the composition, Vivien Bittencourt looks out coolly into the viewer’s space. Bittencourt is Katz’s daughter-in-law, and her form recurs often within his oeuvre across individual and group portraits. She features in his striking night-time family portrait Ada’s Garden (2000, Des Moines Art Center), and her closely-cropped visage dominates Black Hat 2 (2010), which graced the cover of the catalogue for Katz’s recent retrospective at the Albertina Museum, Vienna, in 2023. Shortly after sitting for the present work, Bittencourt and her husband Vincent filmed Katz in his New York studio, creating an intimate depiction of the artist’s practice. In the present work, Bittencourt is flanked by Lyons and Chase, each of whom look out beyond the edge of the picture plane. Both women also sat for Katz several times, and Chase has worked in Katz’s studio since the 1980s. ‘Posing for Alex is better than going to a French New Wave film; it’s like being in one,’ she later reflected. ‘I never thought of the finished works as portraits of me—just as great paintings’ (D. Chase quoted in C. Hochberger, ‘Do You Have What It Takes To Pose For A Masterpiece? Models Describe Sitting for Lucian Freud, Alex Katz, Kehinde Wiley, and Others’, Artspace, 29 June 2018).
Katz would develop the present work into one of his iconic cutouts, which first emerged in his practice in the late 1950s and with which Katz has depicted family, friends and acquaintances from New York’s social milieu across many decades. The cutouts transposed the clean lines and flat planes of unmodulated colour which define Katz’s painted works onto smooth, resistant surfaces of aluminium and steel. He is interested in the relations between people, how they style themselves within and against the society they inhabit, and his group portraits latch on to these details. The present work, capturing the cool cropped hairstyles and bold geometric swimsuits of 1990s tastemakers, reflects Katz’s enduring interest in fashion and style as modes of expression and markers of place and time.
Il Senso del Colore: Works from the Alessandro Grassi Collection
‘Colour has always had a great presence in my life, so much so that in the choice of the works colour itself, before anything else … is the dominant element’ (Alessandro Grassi)
Christie’s is honoured to present a selection of works from the Alessandro Grassi Collection, to be offered in sales across Paris and London in October 2025. This occasion marks a rare opportunity to acquire works from one of the most storied collections in Italy.
Alessandro Grassi (1942-2009) was born among colours. His chemist father was a founder of Colorama, a key producer of printing inks, and he would follow into this field, becoming a prominent industrialist in Milan. An elegant and sophisticated man, he began his collection in 1979 with the Transavanguardia: a group of Italian artists who embraced vivid colour, form and symbolism in reaction to the Conceptual and Minimal tendencies of the previous decade. ‘I’m anti-minimalist’, Grassi said. ‘Everything I bought was because it provoked a strong emotion in me at the time.’
Grassi soon became a leading Transavanguardia collector, and expanded into genres from Pop to Spatialism and Arte Povera. He forged close relationships with the eminent art historian Achille Bonito Oliva and the Modena-based gallerist Emilio Mazzoli, from whom he acquired many works, often from the artists’ inaugural exhibitions. He lived among them in an extraordinary art-filled apartment in Milan, documented in the 1993 volume Collezione privata. He lent generously to museum exhibitions, and left a significant bequest to Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto (MART) upon his death. More recently, the collection was celebrated in the 2018 exhibition Codice colore at the Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, the city of Grassi’s birth.
Italian art formed the core of the collection. Among the works offered are two paintings by Salvo, who plays with genre and fame in his Paessagio (1984) and 31 Siciliani (1976). Mario Schifano’s magnificent Grande quadro equestre italiano (1978) is another highlight. Widely reproduced—appearing on the cover of Flash Art, and in Schifano’s major retrospective of 2002—it is an exemplary work by the maverick postmodern painter, who drew upon urban experience and deconstructed art-historical tradition.
Elsewhere, Untitled (1989-1991), a rare collaborative tapestry by Mimmo Paladino and Alighiero Boetti, offers a meditation on the infinite, intertwined complexities of existence. Gino de Dominicis’s Untitled (1997-1998), with its red figure set amid a gleaming ground of silver, is a typically enigmatic vision from one of post-war Italy’s most mysterious artists. Grassi did not limit himself to any one medium or category, and developed an international outlook over the years. He was drawn to the bold visual language of Alex Katz, whose Kym 2 (1989-1990), Study for Chance (1990) and Sissel (2000) are among the standout works in this selection. They relate both to American Pop and to the Neo- Expressionist tendency that paralleled Italy’s Transavanguardia. Valley Curtain (project for Colorado) (1972), meanwhile, is a drawing for Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s installation which spanned a Colorado highway with bright orange fabric.
With an exacting eye for colour, mood and expressive power, Grassi assembled a remarkable collection that ranked among the finest in Italy. Together, the works offered paint a picture of the passion and personal feeling with which Grassi pursued his vision, and of the joy and vibrancy that art can bring to life.