Barnett Newman - Black Fire I 1961
Black Fire I 1961
289x213cm oil/canvas
Sold for: USD 84.2 million
Auction house: Christie's, New York
Sale date: 13 May 2014
Seller: Anonymous owner
Buyer: Anonymous buyer
From Christie's:
Newman's black and white paintings constitute an important chapter within his art and his life. From the late 1940s onwards, he had largely occupied himself with the creation of vast, immersive fields of sumptuous color divided by his signature stripes, or 'zips,' in contrasting hues. Yet in late 1957, the artist suffered a heart attack that hospitalized him for six weeks. The incident was, he said, "like instant psychoanalysis" and prompted a radical change in his already pared-back mode of abstraction.