Lucio Fontana’s Concetto spaziale, La tremendous di Dio (1964), which has been within the Cindy and Howard Rachofsky assortment for over 20 years, will come up on the market at Sotheby’s this Might.
Concetto, a superb cadmium yellow work from one of many artist’s most recognizable sequence, comes with an estimate of $20 million – $30 million, which makes the work not solely the priciest Fontana to ever come to public sale, but additionally units the stage for a doable public sale report. The work is certainly one of solely 4 works within the La tremendous di Dio sequence that Fontana made in cadmium yellow, certainly one of which set Fontana’s present public sale report of $29.1 million when it offered at Christie’s in 2015.
The Rachofsky’s Concetto spaziale, La tremendous di Dio stands out among the many 4 yellow variations for having been a spotlight on the Met’s Fontana retrospective in 2019 and by what Sotheby’s described because the “all-over density of its punctures, round which thickly built-up layers and globs of impasto coalesce, leading to a composition that sears with visible drama and heightened depth.”
The Rachofskys purchased the work from Sotheby’s London in 2003 for $2.3 million. On the time, it was the very best worth ever paid at public sale for a Fontana. The acquisition was a watershed second for the accumulating couple, who aspired to construct a global assortment with a specific concentrate on actions that had but to realize international recognition.
The sale might be seen as a blow to the Dallas Museum of Artwork, to which the Rachofskys, together with fellow Dallas-based energy collectors the Hoffman household and the Rose household, pledged the whole thing of their assortment in 2005, albeit with the caveat that the couple should buy work and promote it as they see match to ensure that the gathering to stay consistent with their imaginative and prescient over time. The present was documented in a catalog for the DMA exhibition Quick Ahead, by which it was described as an “irrevocable present.”
In response to Sotheby’s, “the Rachofskys have already donated over $50 million of artwork to the museum. This sale will allow them to proceed making necessary acquisitions, additional evolving the gathering in methods which can proceed to profit the Dallas Museum of Artwork.”
The work will go on sale at Sotheby’s Up to date Night Public sale on Might 15.