Nina Simone Childhood Home: Benefit Auction Co-Presented by the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and Pace Gallery | Hosted by Sotheby’s

Nina Simone Childhood Home: Benefit Auction Co-Presented by the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and Pace Gallery | Hosted by Sotheby’s

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 10. Nina in the Sky with Diamonds.

Stanley Whitney

Nina in the Sky with Diamonds

Lot Closed

May 22, 07:10 PM GMT

Estimate

450,000 - 480,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Stanley Whitney

b. 1946

Nina in the Sky with Diamonds


Executed in 2023.

Signed and dated on verso

Oil on linen

60 by 60 in. 60 by 60 in. (152 2/5 cm. x 152 2/5 cm.)


© Stanley Whitney. Courtesy of the artist


Please note that while this auction is hosted on Sothebys.com, it is being administered by Pace Gallery, and all post-sale matters (inclusive of invoicing and property pickup/shipment) will be handled by Pace Gallery. As such, Sotheby’s will share the contact details for the winning bidders with Pace Gallery so that they may be in touch directly post-sale.

Acquired from the artist's studio

“I start at the top and work down,” Stanley Whitney explains about his artistic process. “That gets into call-and-response. One color calls forth another. Color dictates the structure, not the other way round.” Whitney’s vibrant abstract paintings unlock the linear structure of the grid, imbuing it with new and unexpected cadences of color, rhythm, and space. Deriving inspiration from sources as diverse as Piet Mondrian, Giorgio Morandi, and American quilting, Whitney composes with blocks and bars that articulate a chromatic dialogue in each canvas. He has spent many years experimenting with the seemingly limitless potential of a single compositional method, loosely dividing square canvases into multiple registers. Thinly applied oil paint retains his active brushstrokes and allows for transparency and tension at the overlapping borders between each rectilinear parcel of vivid color. He explores the shifting effects of freehand geometries at both intimate and grand scales as he deftly lays down successive blocks of paint, heeding the call of each color. Experimental jazz—Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman—is Whitney’s soundtrack, its defining improvisational method yielding ever new energies to his process of painting.