Christie’s specialists share the must-see lots coming to Contemporary New York this February

‘Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square paintings transformed colour from a supporting element into the true subject of the artwork, stripping away expressive gesture and narrative to allow viewers to focus entirely on how colours interact, shift and alter perception.’

‘This remarkable example comes from the esteemed collection of Barbara Jakobson, who purchased the work the year after it was painted from the legendary Sidney Janis Gallery. This beacon of 20th-century art was a centrepiece of Jakobson’s storied Upper East Side townhouse. A striking goldenrod orange punctuates the composition, while the surrounding subtle ochre shades transition into a sobering grey, highlighting both contrast and balance of hues across the 40-inch square.’

‘A nine-colour etching utilising aquatint and spit bite techniques, Achille (Epoch) captures Julie Mehretu’s distinctive approach to abstraction through density, movement and accumulated gesture. Rooted in the contemporary artist’s long-standing engagement with mapping, architecture and the passage of time, the work resists fixed orientation, instead inviting the viewer into a dynamic visual field that rewards sustained looking.’

‘This joyful pair of child-size bear sculptures with their wide eyes, matching his-and-hers outfits and cartoonish faces, welcomes us into the distinct world of Jeff Koons. They are Adam and Eve, an Alpine European couple, toys we wish would come to life to play with us. But make no mistake: these friends were painstakingly carved from wood and polychromed in a manner redolent of great Medieval church sculpture in Germany. It’s a marvel to view them up close and see how the artist transformed these two loveable creatures from mere souvenirs into objects of the highest art.’

‘Untitled (1971) is a rare and intimate work on paper in which Cy Twombly distils gesture, memory, and biography into a single, rhythmic field. Spiralling lines in sapphire and cobalt blues hover between writing and erasure, evoking both a seascape and the artist’s interior landscape. The collaged image of a great egret and the handwritten word ‘Captiva’ anchors the composition to a specific place, alluding to Twombly’s enduring relationship with Robert Rauschenberg and their shared history on the Florida island. The work’s distinguished provenance — it was acquired directly from Leo Castelli by gallery owner and patron Janie C. Lee and previously exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art — underscores the work’s historical and artistic significance.’

‘Maria Pergay stands amongst the rare designers of her generation who worked with unwavering intensity throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st. Pergay spent most of her life in her adopted home of France, where her artistic vision was nurtured and refined. She brought distinctive softness and lightness to design, alongside a sense of imaginative play, while drawing inspiration from the precision and rhythms of geometry. Though many forward-looking designers in the 1960s turned to fibreglass and plastic — materials synonymous with emerging Minimalist aesthetics — this piece by Pergay demonstrates her unique approach to formal simplicity while introducing a dynamic play of light and reflection.’

‘In Etel Adnan’s Untitled, abstracted bands of colour suggest a landscape — one that perhaps melds elements from the several locales she called home. Sapphiric blues evoking the Mediterranean seas that cradle her birthplace of Lebanon are juxtaposed against warm tones of orange and flaxen gold, which call up the glowing sunsets of California, where she would later study and teach.’

‘Wielding a palette knife with incredible precision, here Adnan creates a surface whose layered textures mirror the peaks and valleys of these remembered landscapes while revealing the decisive, balanced movements of her hand.’

‘Drawing from both Eastern and Western visual languages, Ernst Yohji Jaeger constructs compositions that feel at once restrained and deeply expressive, inviting sustained contemplation rather than immediate resolution. His paintings reveal a sensitivity to material and process, allowing subtle shifts in tone, texture and gesture to carry conceptual weight. This work from 2019 exemplifies the clarity of vision that has come to define Jaeger’s emerging practice, signalling an artist poised for significant critical attention.’

‘In the early 1960s, Helen Frankenthaler made the shift from oil to acrylic paint, allowing her to develop crisper edges, more controlled pours with bolder colours. Painted in 1965, Strike exemplifies the artist’s mastery of her signature soak-stain technique in a new medium. Luminous pools of blue, terracotta and ochre wade around a grounding charcoal wash, punctuated by a flash of raw canvas in the lower right quadrant.’

‘Strike is characteristic of Frankenthaler at her best, reinventing colour and expanding the possibility of painting through a lucid synthesis of hue and form. One year after she painted this work, she represented the United States at the 33rd Venice Biennale, alongside Ellsworth Kelly and Roy Lichtenstein, cementing her stature as a pioneer of Post-War painting.’

‘The singular artist Olga de Amaral operates at the intersection of painting, sculpture and design, weaving together histories both ancient and modern, universal and personal. Trained as an architect in her native Colombia, de Amaral later studied textile design in the United States before dedicating herself to her art. Her sumptuous weavings are objects of exploration and experimentation. They incorporate materials ranging from horsehair to cotton, linen, acrylic, plaster and paint.’

‘In the 1970s de Amaral began experimenting with gold leaf to capture and reflect light, adding incredible dimensionality to her creations. Executed in 1987, Obra oro 500 hails from the celebrated collection of Elaine Wynn, an arbiter of style who embodied glamour and had an incredible eye for quality.’

‘William Edmondson was born in Nashville and went on to become the first African American artist to have a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He worked in repurposed limestone, so the shape of each of his sculptures was governed by its starting block. Seated Girl emerges from a square stone, which is unique amongst his female figures, which were often carved from rectangular blocks.’

‘Edmondson lived and worked near Nashville’s 1897 full-scale replica of the Parthenon, and Seated Girl’s pose may have been influenced by the friezes on that landmark. Diminutive, elegant and intimate, it is one of two to feature this carefully balanced seated pose. This sculpture was previously in the collection of Edmund Fuller, an early leading scholar of Edmondson’s work. A large-scale, more geometric version is in the Newark Museum of Art’s collection.’

‘Barbara Jakobson and Elizabeth Taylor were women of the same era, both immortalised by artists of their time. Andy Warhol’s Liz (1964), from Jakobson’s collection, is a classic example of the Pop artist’s serialised works using Hollywood publicity photographs. The print’s vibrant blocks of colour intensify Taylor’s glamour and underscore Warhol’s interest in the relationship between media, persona and mythmaking. Compared with other impressions from the same edition, the colours of this print are exceptionally brilliant.’

‘In Willem de Kooning’s Woman, a body emerges as a forceful site of tension between figuration and abstraction, where gestural and incisive lines articulate both presence and psychic intensity. The woman is not a mere subject but a dynamic field of energy, continually redefined through the artist’s relentless negotiation between creation and destruction. This work exemplifies how the female figure became a crucible for de Kooning’s formal innovations, asserting a voice that is as visceral as it is enduring. Held in the distinguished collection of Janie C. Lee for 40 years, the work stands as a testament to de Kooning’s profound impact on post-war abstraction.’