Once-in-a-lifetime lots coming to New York this May, according to Christie’s specialists

‘Constantin Brancusi’s Danaïde (circa 1913) is one of modernism’s few truly perfect works of art. Its radical simplification marks the birth of modern sculpture. Its gilded surface places it in the inner circle of the artist’s patinas. And its history cannot be bettered.

‘It was exhibited in Brancusi’s first one-man exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery in 1914. First owned by the show’s chief patrons, Eugene and Agnes Meyer, it passed to their daughter, Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post. When Mr. Newhouse acquired it from her estate at Christie’s in 2002, it marked the highest price for any sculpture.’

‘Few would deny this is Judd’s greatest stack. “Copper and red Plexiglas, ten units,” sounds clinical on paper, but stand in front of this thing and it is alive. Judd gets called a Minimalist, a fabricator, a theorist, but what this work demands is that you call him a colourist.

‘These materials aren’t passive; the copper shifts and warms and catches light like a painting. The red Plexiglas throws a magenta glow onto the surrounding walls, moving as the sun moves — the environment becomes the work.  We are not seeing industrial detachment; this is a deeply meditated thesis on colour, perhaps his most successful ever. He knew exactly what he was doing.’

‘Standing in front of Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow (1921) is a meditative experience. In this work, we see a perfect, rhythmic balance rendered through Mondrian’s mature pictorial language. He was uncompromising in his mission to develop a pure, universal form of artistic expression, devoid of representation, where painting is reduced to its most essential elements, transcending time and place. The experience is universal.

‘The method, however, is anything but simple. Mondrian’s fastidious nature meant that he would continually change the saturation of the colour blocks, the width and depth of the black lines, striving for the perfect compositional balance, attained in Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow.’

‘Painted in 1961, Untitled captures Cy Twombly at a turning point, as he embraced the energy and atmosphere of the Mediterranean. Having settled in Rome, he moves away from the cooler, more restrained feel of his earlier paintings and leans into something more vivid and expressive.

‘The surface feels restless and alive, filled with looping graphite lines and sweeping gestures. Twombly builds layers of fleshy reds, earthy browns, and flashes of blue, creating something energetic and intuitive, yet composed.

‘Look a little longer and hints of shapes—crowns, fragments of architecture—seem to appear and then dissolve. Nothing settles into a fixed meaning. Twombly's deep appreciation for history and mythology remains embedded but subliminal, encouraging the viewer to piece things together like an archaeologist excavating the visual references of his painting.’

‘Target was painted in 2000, when Doig was becoming internationally recognised, and this period marked a shift from the thick, near-sculptural layers of impasto of the 1990s to the translucent layers and luminous, hallucinogenic colour of the 2000s.

‘Rendered in beautiful tones of red, green, blue and white with the snow bathed in golden evening light, the painting shows the artist’s brother standing by a frozen lake, seen through a web of branches. It is a scene remembered from Doig’s childhood in Rosedale, Toronto, but painted years later in London.

‘Originally acquired by the famed shoe designer Ernesto Esposito shortly after its creation, Target has since been owned by the same private collector for almost two decades and has rarely been seen in public.’

‘This Richter is a highlight of Marian Goodman’s personal collection, works that she chose to live with in her home. Goodman started representing Richter in 1985, beginning a four-decade-long relationship that is between arguably the greatest gallerist and the greatest living painter of our time.

‘Kerze (1982) is from a series rendered in a photorealist style that emphasises the fleeting nature of both the candle and life itself — a symbol of ephemerality and a memento mori. In East Germany, where Richter grew up, candles also symbolised silent protest amid rising tensions around the Berlin Wall. And in 1988, Sonic Youth used one of his candle paintings as an album cover, reinforcing themes of youthful rebellion.

‘Richter created 27 candle paintings, and about one-third are in institutional collections. This is the first to appear at auction in 15 years, and it’s especially exciting to have one from his longtime gallerist.’

‘Anxious Girl is a best-in-class example of Roy Lichtenstein, from 1964, the pinnacle of his career. Compositionally, the painting showcases the artist’s singular ability to distill complex visual cues into three core elements — line, colour, and form — and formally employ them into conveying deep human emotion through timeless love stories.

Lichtenstein began to lend inspiration from advertisements and comic book imagery in 1961 — however, the most sophisticated and desirable were made during 1963-1965. Anxious Girl is one of only ten paintings from this short time period that feature an individual woman as the sole subject in a tightly cropped frame, investigating both the psychology and beauty of the female form.

Formerly in the collection of art world legends Horace and Holly Solomon, the painting has been held in the same esteemed private collection for more than thirty years and has never before been seen in public. This work is the quintessential Pop portrait, a veritable icon of twentieth century art. ’

‘This painting comes from Lorinda Payson de Roulet, who was part of one of the great American collecting families. Her mother, Joan Whitney Payson, has galleries named after her at the Met Museum and was also the co-founder of the Mets baseball team.

‘This wonderful Renoir was acquired by Mrs. Payson in 1929 for the then-staggering sum of $100,000 and has remained in the family ever since. The subject, Nini Lopez, was his muse from this period, and it represents the Impressionist highlight of the season as well as a masterwork of the Impressionist portraits Renoir was known for.’

‘Agnes Gund was a beloved member of the art community and a past President of MoMA. She collected with purpose and lived with the works that she owned. She also famously donated and sold works for worthy causes, which deepens the sense of privilege we have to be working with her collection.

‘This Rothko painting from 1964 is over seven feet tall and monumental in both scale and presence. Gund bought it directly from the artist’s studio in 1967 and it is one of only three we know of that came from his studio and remain in private hands — a rare thing in today’s art world.’

‘This amazing flower painting was created in 1924, following O’Keeffe’s first major 1923 exhibition in New York, which immediately made her famous for her flower paintings. It is executed during the peak moment for her most famous subject — the flower — and is a colourful, dynamic and large-scale example.

‘What’s also very exciting about this picture is that, when we first saw the painting off the wall and were able to turn it around, it revealed another painting on the reverse. The reverse painting was abstract and reminds us that O’Keeffe was not just a painter of flowers, but one of the first painters in America exploring complete abstraction.’

‘Almaïsa (1917) stands as an icon of Modigliani's unique avant-garde sensibility — sensual and powerful, sinuously mannerist yet entirely modern, universal yet utterly specific. Not only has she been coveted and held over the years by legendary collectors of modern art, whilst shown in some marvelous early exhibitions, what I find most profound is the immediacy of the viewing experience itself, which is electric. Her skin radiates a human warmth. Her gaze will not let you go. Beyond a portrait of likeness, Almaïsa replicates the very sensation of a most compelling, human, presence, as recorded through the alchemy of Modigliani’s brush.’

'Kandinsky’s epic Morgenstunde (Morning Hour) (1907) is a dazzling and exceptionally rare mosaic of luminous colour and deftly rendered form. Monumental and immersive, you can almost hear the sounds of the folkloric scene as it unfolds. The stillness before a looming battle. The rumbling of footsteps and spears rattling the earth. The rustling of wind in the distant trees as daylight breaks just beyond the clouds. Below, beckoning the morning and its forthcoming trials and tribulations, a trumpeter rides east.’

‘Study for Portrait I (after the Life Mask of William Blake) (1955) by Francis Bacon is an intimate and meditative painting that demonstrates the artist's astounding ability to convey human emotion with the merest of means. Depicting the haunting plaster cast of William Blake, poet, print maker, painter and one of the most enigmatic figures of the Romantic movement, Bacon masterfully renders the subject with distinct, confident brushstrokes that emphasise both the power of anatomy and the act of painting.’

‘What’s exciting about Basquiat is that there’s always a puzzle to be solved. On first inspection, you see a man holding a fishing rod and wonder why a 21-year-old from Brooklyn would focus on a fisherman. If you dive into his history, you realize water is a constant presence. He grew up in Brooklyn, where people fish off bridges and piers. His parents were from Haiti and Puerto Rico and carried traces of Haitian Vodou traditions. There’s also ancestry rooted in West Africa, so water surrounds the story. On top of that, there’s a clear Catholic influence. Basquiat attended Catholic school, where the idea of becoming “fishers of men” is central.

‘Across these histories and spiritual traditions, you begin to see a parallel: the fisherman and the painter both dredge up the past and present it for contemporary culture. That, I think, is why the fisherman appears here and in some of his most powerful works.’