Christie’s experts on their favourite works from Post-War to Present and Photographs

‘It’s beyond exciting to spotlight Peinture II (1964) during the centennial of Joan Mitchell’s birth. The work comes from the collection of the vivacious Kansas-born theatre director and educator Vivian Fusillo. What immediately struck me was how complex and balanced the composition was. The paint builds like a crescendo, creating a mountainous terrain of vertigo-inducing peaks and valleys, you could get lost in it for hours.

‘The work belongs to one of the most fascinating series of Mitchell’s oeuvre, her “black paintings” — though she never used the colour black in them. Painted during a period of immense personal strife, these canvases reveal not only how painting helped her navigate the turmoil but also how, even in sorrow, beauty can emerge. Here, she brilliantly combines sage and olive greens with peachy pinks, violets, and lilacs. Every inch bursts with colour and drama. It’s a tour de force.’

‘Matthew Wong’s brief but significant oeuvre is highly sought after by collectors. The dynamic brushwork of his landscapes draws on Impressionism, Van Gogh and the Fauves yet feels unmistakably contemporary. In 5:22 PM you see this in the beautiful tree in the foreground, where oranges and blues combine to suggest shifting light and shadow. The title marks the exact time he finished the painting. The palette has the glow of sunset, and in the upper left corner you’ll spot a tiny orange orb setting in the background.

‘Wong built a community online, connecting with artists, collectors, and friends through Facebook, emails, and blogs. This painting comes from one such connection. His ability to create a strong virtual network remains an inspiring part of his legacy.’

‘Outside of his native Colombia, Alejandro Obregón is not a household name, but paintings like Chivo expiatorio that flaunt the artist’s unique style of heady surrealist expressionism make me believe that will change.

‘There’s a play in Obregón’s Chivo expiatorio between lightness and darkness, exuberance and death, that I find visually arresting. I also find it unnerving. I can’t help but think the surreal, skeletal goat dangling from a stake in the sky is laughing at me. This isn’t just any chivo; as the title tells us, this is a chivo expiatorio — a scapegoat. Meanwhile a majestic condor, a symbol of Colombia and a recurrent motif in the artist’s oeuvre, appears firmly rooted on the mountaintop. Beneath them, an exuberant jumble of flowers brings a startling brightness to the canvas. There’s a joke or cautionary tale here that Obregón isn’t letting me in on. I’m left with a lot of questions and a desire to spend more time with the painting.’

‘This photograph is exciting because it’s a lifetime print, developed by hand by Francesca Woodman during her relatively short career. It embodies so much of what defined her art: everyday objects and architectural elements placed in dialogue with the body, drawing out its sculptural, almost surreal qualities. The way the chair is printed is exquisite. It pulls your eye into the space between it and the body, creating an enigmatic narrative. These lifetime prints are incredibly powerful in person. They have an overwhelming aura when you study them up close. Part of that comes from knowing the story of her brief life and the importance of what she achieved so young.

‘She developed her prints with such sensitivity and delicacy that everyday objects take on an ethereal quality. The excitement of a young artist brimming with ideas is palpable in her work. Interest in Woodman’s work has continued to grow since her death in 1981. Gallery representation, scholarship, books, and museum exhibitions have all played a part. People are captivated by her images.’

‘Alice Neel is one of the foremost portraitists of the 20th century, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent retrospective bringing her squarely to the forefront and reshaping how we think about post-war portraiture. Dick Bagley’s Girlfriend is an exciting example from early in her career. Bagley was a cinematographer in the Downtown New York art circles that Neel frequented — there’s a portrait of him in the Met. While we don’t know his girlfriend’s name, this work is incredibly special in how it situates Neel within that intellectual milieu.

‘Neel is known for her psychological portraiture and the immediacy with which she presents her subjects, and you can already sense that here. She experiments with compositional flatness, elongated features, harsh shadow and a heightened colour palette. These devices make the sitter appear vulnerable yet dignified and strong. Neel was not concerned with what was in vogue; she remained unrelentingly committed to portraiture. That conviction established her as an undeniable force — one whose empathetic, expressive portraits still feel ahead of their time.’

‘Like Olga de Amaral, Carmen Herrera, Zilia Sánchez, Luchita Hurtado and so many other pioneering women artists, accolades have come late in life for the legendary Cecilia Vicuña. In recent years, this multifaceted artist — whose practice includes painting, poetry, installation, and performance — has enjoyed a whirlwind of recognition, with major exhibitions at the Guggenheim and Tate Modern and a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2022 Venice Biennale. But despite the art world’s belated recognition, Vicuña has been steadfast in her eco-feminist vision for more than six decades.

‘The Benefits of Poetry brings together so many elements integral to Vicuña’s practice — her love of painting, her devotion to poetry, and her enduring concern for the environment. Painted in 1973, the year she was forced into exile following the violent coup in Chile, the painting imagines Vicuña’s future self dancing and frolicking amid a desert-like landscape. Much as she has approached her life as artist and activist, The Benefits of Poetry remains hopeful and committed to the liberating potential of art and creativity.’

‘Jack Whitten was one of the most dynamic and inventive painters of his generation. He redefined not only what painting could be but also the means by which it could be created. Grey Soul comes from an early moment in his practice when he began to innovate with the painted picture — taking the canvas off the wall and off the stretcher altogether, laying it on the floor and experimenting with bold new methods of application.

‘Despite Whitten’s often mechanical processes, the work retains a striking vitality. Its palette of celestial tones of pink, green and blue emanate across a moody grey ground, creating something like an aurora borealis. Art historically, this early work is incredibly important, and it appears at a perfect moment, with the MoMA’s acclaimed retrospective of the artist only blocks from Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries.’

‘What I love about this work on paper by Gunther Gerzso is how quintessentially modern it is. A key figure in 20th-century abstraction, Gerzso rooted his work within the art and architecture of Mexico. Paisaje (Landscape) draws inspiration from the country’s topography. Born to European émigré parents, Gerzso was closely aligned with the burgeoning Surrealist circle in Mexico City, which included fellow émigré artists Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Wolfgang Paalen. While Paisaje veers much more into the realm of abstraction, there is always an element of the surreal that drives his creations.

‘In scale and composition, there’s an intimacy to Paisaje that pulls me in every time I am in front of it. The skilful and deliberate application of media, including pastel, paper collage, and sand, bring the composition to life, and the contrast between the ethereal landscape, punctuated by the brightly coloured geometric forms, creates a sense of space and dimension within the overall picture. Executed in 1976, Paisaje has remained in the same private family collection for years, handed down between generations like the jewel that it is. We are thrilled it’s making its auction debut this September.’