The Black Painting That Set Frank Stella's Auction Record
3 min read · 05 Feb 2025
Point Of Pines. Image courtesy of Christie's
Frank Stella, Point Of Pines (1959), sold for $28.08m at Christie's in New York on May 15, 2019. The enamel on canvas work had been traded 4 times in the past.
In 2014, Stella's New York dealer, Marianne Boesky, told Artnet News that in a private sale his Black Paintings can fetch in the range of $35m to $45m.
Painted in 1959 when Stella was 23, Point Of Pines (1959) is one of the artist's celebrated monochrome series that he began less than a year after graduating from Princeton University. Stella created the large-scale works while painting houses as a day job. Using the same brushes, he laid down bands of black enamel paint directly onto the surface of raw, unprimed canvas.
His bravura works caught the eye of MoMA curator Dorothy Miller, who included Stella in the museum's landmark show "Sixteen Americans", where his paintings hung alongside pieces by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns among others. Within a decade, Stella had become the youngest artist to have a MoMA retrospective, aged 34.
Delaware Crossing. Image courtesy of Sotheby's
The sale beat Stella's previous auction record by $14.39m, a 100% rise. His previous record was set by Delaware Crossing (1961), which sold for $13.69m at Sotheby's on November 4, 2015. The work had not been traded before.
A Brief History of Frank Stella at Auction
Sale Date | Title | Price | Record Increase | Venue | City |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2019-05-15 | Point Of Pines | $28.08m | 105 % | Christie's | New York |
2015-11-04 | Delaware Crossing | $13.69m | 106 % | Sotheby's | New York |
2014-05-13 | Abajo | $6.66m | 32 % | Christie's | New York |
1989-11-08 | Tomlinson Court Park | $5.06m | 322 % | Sotheby's | New York |
1989-05-02 | Quathlamba | $1.2m | 100 % | Sotheby's | New York |
1988-11-10 | Jungli-Kowwa | $600,000 | 43 % | Sotheby's | New York |
1982-05-05 | Reichstag | $420,000 | 87 % | Christie's | New York |
1981-11-19 | Tampa | $225,000 | 150 % | Sotheby's | New York |
1980-11-12 | Firuzabad III | $90,000 | 6 % | Christie's | New York |
1980-05-16 | Abajo | $85,000 | 13 % | Christie's | New York |
1979-11-09 | Sinjerli II | $75,000 | 11 % | Christie's | New York |
1974-05-03 | Sidney Guberman | $67,500 | 76 % | Sotheby's | New York |
1974-04-04 | Baft | $38,400 | 7 % | Finarte Casa d'Aste | Rome |
1971-11-17 | Sinjerli variation III | $36,000 | 7 % | Sotheby's | New York |
1970-11-18 | Seven steps | $33,500 | - | Sotheby's | New York |
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