Woman III - Willem de Kooning

Price in US $137,500,000




Willem de Kooning was a Dutch abstract expressionist artist. The hallmark of de Kooning's style was an emphasis on complex figure ground ambiguity. Background figures would overlap other figures causing them to appear in the foreground, which in turn might be overlapped by dripping lines of paint thus positioning the area into the background.

"The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves."

No. 5, 1948 - Jackson Pollock

Price in US $ - 140,000,000

No. 5, 1948 - an abstract painting by Jackson Pollock, an American painter known for his contributions to the abstract expressionist movement, was done on an 8' x 4' sheet of fiberboard, with thick amounts of brown and yellow paint drizzled on top of it, forming a nest-like appearance.The Pollock work features the US artist's famous drip-and-pour style. Jackson Pollock's work had a major influence on art in the latter half of the 20th Century, sparking the emergence of abstract expressionism. The artist battled alcoholism and depression and is generally regarded as a self-destructive, tortured genius. He died in a car crash in 1956, aged 44.